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TEACHING IN THE HOME 



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TEACHING IN THE H'^ ME 

A Handbook for Intensive Fertilisation 
of the Child Mind 

for 

Instructors of Young Children 



ADOLF A/BERLE, A.M., D.D. 

FORMER PROFESSOR OF APPLIED CHRISTIANITY IN TUFTS COLLEGE 

Author of "The School in the Home," "Christianity and 

The Social Rage." Director of the Berle 

Home-Correspondence School. 




New York 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1915 






Copyright, 1915, by 
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 



/. 



^^ 



W. F. BRAINARD 

BOOK MANUFACTURER 
NEW YORK 



QCT 27 1915 

©C1.A4I4257 



TO 

A. W. 1. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS . . ix 

I SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES ... 1 

II ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! .... 37 

III GRAMMAR 65 

IV LANGUAGES 85 

V GEOGRAPHY 112 

VI HISTORY 142 

VII SCIENCE IN GENERAL 173 

\IU PHYSIOLOGY 196 

IX BOTANY 220 

X ZOOLOGY 241 

XI GEOLOGY 268 

XII GEOMETRY 294 

XIII ETHICS 313 

XIV BIBLIOGRAPHY 341 



A LETTER TO TEACHING 
PARENTS 

My dear Friends : 

This volume has come into being by your 
own request. In my "School in the Home" 
I was, perhaps unwisely, led to remark that 
some day I might write such a little book as 
this, for the guidance of parents who believed 
in the doctrines I taught in that book, with the 
result that many hundreds of letters were re- 
ceived urging that it should be written at once. 
For a long time I hesitated about acceding to 
these requests, because I feared that all I should 
do would be to add another to the already 
countless books on dealing with children, when 
I know that the results depend vastly more 
upon the consecration and ambition of the par- 
ents for their children, than upon any other sin- 
gle element of the problem. Indeed, I often 
wrote exactly this to the many inquiring par- 
ents. But I was met so often with the state- 
ment that it was merely guidance that was 
needed, and that while my book was stimulat- 
ing and inspiring, on the whole what was 



X A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

now needed was a handbook of some sort which 
should tell the parents "what to do." 

After a good deal of travail of soul I have 
attempted to do just that; in fact, I have done 
more. I have tried to tell substantially what 
I did do and what I still do, whenever I have 
the opportunity to direct the instruction of lit- 
tle children. If it sometimes seems blind to 
you, or halting in meaning, you will under- 
stand that this arises from the necessary limi- 
tations of the case. We do many things with- 
out knowing that we are doing them, and con- 
vey a great deal by our attitudes and our in- 
clinations, either for or against, any given sub- 
ject. This of course cannot be conveyed in a 
book nor is it desirable that it should be. But 
in so far as I am able to tell what I have ac- 
tually done with little children, this book tells 
the story. I have tried not to preach and 
when I seem to be preaching, you will under- 
stand that I am merely making a zealous ef- 
fort to make you feel as I feel myself. 

NEGOTIABLE KNOWLEDGE 

The essence of this method of mine is, that it 
always deals with what I have called nego- 
tiable knowledge. It is one thing to know a 
thing practically, but it is quite another to 
know it in a form which makes it educationally 



A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xi 

negotiable. Examinations are the test of ne- 
gotiable knowledge. They aim to find out 
how much the student knows, in the form in 
which the world has decided that it must be, to 
be knowledge. This form I grant you, is often 
stupid, cumbersome and senseless from many 
points of view. But so long as the educational 
institutions, the scholars of the world, hold to 
their present ideas of what constitutes knowl- 
edge, and particularly since they will not rec- 
ognize your possession of their particular kind 
of knowledge, unless you are able to patter it 
back to them in the agreed vocabulary of their 
science, it is useless to do anything other than 
master it in their way. You know how often 
your child will tell you that their teachers will 
not recognize the fact that they know all about 
a given thing, unless they can say it in the pre- 
cise terms which the teachers lay down. It is 
stupid, foolish and irrational. But you and I 
must make up our minds to accept that fact as 
a fact, and deal with it as we do with a great 
many other foolish and stupid things in this 
world. That is the reason why in these chap- 
ters I am constantly urging you to use the ter- 
minology which the schoolmen themselves em- 
ploy, since they will never know and will not 
even try to find out whether your child has the 
knowledge it is supposed to have, unless you 



xii A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

talk in the only tongue they understand. 
When you have knowledge in this form 
you have negotiable knowledge, education- 
ally speaking. Without it you are help- 
less when you strike the educational machine. 
Even then you will have some very curious ex- 
periences. One of my children, while a fresh- 
man was taking the singular course of train- 
ing in English in Harvard University which 
is called English A. It was devised because 
the young freshmen come to college not know- 
ing anything about their mother tongue and 
by this means are hurriedly whipped into some 
sort of a working knowledge of educational 
English. Well, I sent up a boy whose Eng- 
lish was highly developed and who wrote 
themes which were in the tongue of the schools. 
You would have supposed that his instructor 
would weep for joy at finding a boy who did 
not need the petty corrections in spelling and 
ordinary blunders which should be ehminated 
before the grades are left. But no, the aca- 
demic mind, insane on the subject of correction, 
finding none of the petty things, found fault 
with what do you suppose? Why with the 
faultless English of course ! This boy's fresh- 
man year came perilously near being upset 
nervously, and would have been had we not 
been on the ground, by the constant nagging 



A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xiii 

at the boy with this criticism, *'This is not the 
language of a boy of fourteen. It is the lan- 
guage of a man. Write naturally!" In vain 
the youth protested that it was his natural 
tongue, that he did not know any other, asked 
if the words were misspelled or wrongly used 
and the like, no one of which corrections were 
needed. In vain! He was hammered right 
and left because his English was not the Eng- 
lish of a boy of fourteen ! All this meant was 
that the instructor was not used to that kind of 
boys. To do this particular gentleman jus- 
tice, he came afterward to see his error. But 
he was the educational machine incarnate. 

Now, it being the fact that the educational 
machine will recognize no other tongue than 
that of the schools, there is nothing to do but 
to master it. Hence you will speak to your 
little children about conduct but when you dis- 
cuss the subject of conduct, you will say ethics 
because presently your boy or girl will have to 
deal with some half-baked young doctor of 
philosophy, who does not know any other word 
than ethics and if you don't say ethics he will 
assume that you don't know what you are talk- 
ing about. So also when you build blocks with 
your children talk about squares, triangles and 
polygons because these are the words which 
will have to be used. Thus it is not so ridicu- 



xiv A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

lous as it looks at the first glance to ask you 
to instruct your children in Geology, Botany, 
Physiology, and the rest. These are the stand- 
ardized terms for that kind of knowledge. It 
is the ability to use them accurately and care- 
fully which makes, what I have called, nego- 
tiable knowledge. 

HELP, don't FIGHT, THE SCHOOLi 

For this very reason, too, you must help, not 
antagonize the schools, especially the elemen- 
tary schools. They are held in the grip of this 
machine as tightly as your child will be when 
he gets to it. When they make their demand 
upon you for what you see clearly is foolish 
and irrational, I beseech you do not waste your 
strength in fighting them and make trouble for 
yourself, your child, and them, and most of it 
to no purpose. Always remember that the 
public school represents the lowest possible at- 
tainment for the groups with which they work. 
It cannot be otherwise and a superior child is 
penalized by being in them. Every teacher 
will tell you that, and she cannot help her- 
self. It is her business to bring her class at the 
end of the year to a certain point. If your 
child can do that work in six months, she has 
no other resource than to neglect your child 
and give his time to the lazy, the careless and 



A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xv 

the undisciplined. Your business then, is to 
study the school to which your child is to go 
and understand its plan and working and fit 
for that. You must know their method and 
their aim and give them what they want in their 
own tongue, because they won't understand 
any other. I know this, too, to my cost. I 
tried to send my own children to a High School 
which had not altered some of its terms of ad- 
mission since 1853 ! But fortunately there was 
another near, where there was a sane enlight- 
ened principal in charge, and in this household, 
the name of Benjamin Sumner Hurd, of the 
Beverly, Mass., High School is enrolled upon 
our calendar of educational saints. Just re- 
member that the more unusually capable your 
child is, the harder it will be for the ordinary 
public school to know what to do with him. 
Don't blame them for this but help them. 
And do not expect that they can make un- 
usual conditions for your child. Just fit him 
for the place to which his attainments entitle 
him and then place him there. Ask no conces- 
sions. And that you may not need to ask con- 
cessions, learn their tongue ! 

Along the pathway you will occasionally 
find sympathetic souls among the teachers, who 
are groaning under the standardization lunacy 
quite as much as you are. But in any case 



xvi A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

remember that your travail will not be without 
results. Your child, trained by superior home 
care and nurture, will soon excite the envy of 
other parents, and that will make them ask 
what there is about your children that is better 
than their own. And when the inquiry begins 
to be general, the methods will begin to mend. 
It only needs enough intelligent discontent to 
get changes made; but it must be backed 
by understanding and sympathy. So I advise 
you not to fight with the schools, their officers 
and teachers; just try to understand them, pity 
them a little, if you can, and help them to a 
more excellent way. 

THE LAUGHTER OF FOOLS 

You will, unless your experience differs from 
that of most pioneers, or in fact any people 
who want something finer and better than the 
average, have to encounter a good deal of ridi- 
cule, from mild amusement to jeering words, 
because of your attempt to make a superior 
person out of your child. Indeed many letters 
which have come to me have indicated that 
this is a not uncommon experience and it some- 
times gives great pain to timid persons. But 
do not be discouraged and above all do not be 
pained by the laughter of fools. There are 
people still who think the use of a toothbrush 



A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xvii 

foolishness and you cannot ride for any length 
of time in an ordinary railway train without 
becoming aware that there are scores of people, 
too, who do not believe in bathing. Well, you 
do not on that account abandon your bath, I 
hope ! So in like manner do not yield your am- 
bition for your child to the senseless comments 
of people who have neither your character nor 
your ambition, to surrender many of the ab- 
surd social diversions for the intellectual wel- 
fare of their children. Just keep it clearly be- 
fore you that the future struggles of the world 
are going to be won by brain power! And if 
your neighbors think you rather foolish for giv- 
ing up their tiresome entertainment for your 
child's well being and mental growth, just let 
them think what they please. You have a seri- 
ous purpose in life and you want your child to 
have the equipment for capable and effective 
living. That is all you need to think about and 
what light-minded social butterflies think about 
anything is not worth considering in any case. 
This applies particularly to those people who 
are climbing socially and who darken the air 
with crazy counsels about social advancement! 
Be not like unto them and remember that there 
always comes a time for everybody in this 
world when they have to live with themselves. 
Give your child the opportunity, that when he 



xviii A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

has to be alone he is in good company, because 
he has with him the resources for finding the 
best in any situation. 

THE FUND OF SYMPATHY 

You all have, as your letters show, an over- 
flowing fund of sympathy and love for your 
children. Nothing in these many letters has 
given me more satisfaction and joy than has 
been shown in the unbounded willingness on the 
part of parents to sacrifice for their children. 
The note of overflowing love has been every- 
where full and wonderful in what reserves of 
emotion it revealed. Now this fund of sympa- 
thy with your child is your alabaster box. Keep 
it for the Highest. Sacrifice when you must 
but never for anything but the best. Do not 
make sacrifice for the child, the support of lazi- 
ness, self-indulgence or deceit. Don't sacrifice 
for the joy of sacrificing. Hold your precious 
ointment for the highest purposes and only for 
these. Everything your child can do himself 
not only let him do, but make him do. There 
will be occasions enough for sacrifice under the 
very best conditions. But do not pour out 
your costly emotions over trifles and let them 
become your own undoing. One of my pro- 
fessors in the theological seminary, a wise and 
devoted man, himself a pastor of many years' 



A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xix 

experience and a sympathetic soul if ever one 
breathed, once delivered a lecture upon the 
ministry to the afflicted in which he dealt with 
a class of people who "hug their grief." I 
did not then know what I now know about 
such things. But there are people who simply 
luxuriate in their grief. In the same way 
many parents, notably mothers, luxuriate in 
their sacrifices for their children to the ex- 
tent of robbing them of honor, self-reliance, 
truthfulness and capability in many directions. 
They call it being a "good" mother. Some- 
times it is a "good" father. As a matter of 
fact it is often a form of self-indulgence. 
Now I believe in good mothers. In fact much 
of the credit given to me, in this matter of 
child training, belongs to such a mother and 
while I have thundered more in the index, she 
has been a silent effective ally in everything 
that I did, when I was not merely the ally my- 
self. But sympathy is a powerful stimulant. 
Used rightly it does wonders in the way of re- 
cuperation, uplifting and pacifying life. But 
because it is so powerful it must be used with 
great discretion. Always keep in mind that 
when your boy gets out into the world, he won't 
get any kind of "sympathy" for anything. 
He will be judged by the merciless standard 
(the only one possible) of whether he is what 



XX A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

he purports to be, can do what he is set to do, 
do it wisely, honorably and effectively, and be 
a livable human being at the same time. No- 
body ordinarily speaking will take the trouble 
to "understand" him. For this reason he must 
understand himself and be able to lean on his 
own understanding, always, of course, remem- 
bering that man proposes but God disposes. 
Do not risk his ultimate success by providing 
a fountain of sympathy which he can turn on 
at will, whether there be adequate cause or not. 
Costly things should be sparingly used. You 
know of course what I mean. 

FINALLY 

I would not be true to myself or to you, if I 
did not add one little word on the spiritual 
greatness of this task of yours. You are rear- 
ing a child, who is not only yours, but also a 
child of God. Make it worthy of the God 
whose child it is and who gave it. That will 
often mean for you much thinking in the still 
silent hours of the night, when your heart is 
thumping with anxiety or expectation, and 
then you will know whether or not you have 
done your work in the love of God and whether 
in dealing with this little soul entrusted to you, 
you have been faithful in that which is least, 
that you might be entrusted with the greater 



A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xxi 

glory of seeing the matured, glorified results of 
your work. When any child of mine or one 
entrusted to me went up for examinations, I 
always felt that it was not they, but I, who was 
on trial. It was the judgment upon my own 
fidelity and obedience to my task as a father or 
teacher. What travail those hours contained! 
How anxiously I waited for them to emerge 
from their examination rooms and eagerly 
looked into their faces, to find out whether 
they bore the joy of triumph or the fear of de- 
feat! Your letters, many of them, show me 
that you have the same anxieties. Keep the 
big fund of your heart's love for these times 
and then let yourself and your child know that 
love is the greatest thing in the world and that 
when love has done her best, there can be only 
joy in what comes, be it success or be it failure. 
But you will not fail! You are doing God's 
work and taking up a God-appointed task. 
In His cause there is no defeat. 

For the numberless kind words directed to 
me personally, I can only return sincere and 
cordial thanks. Somehow, through space, 
there has been established between you and me, 
a bond of affection because of our common love 
for little children. Let us together be always 
mindful that the Great Teacher showed the 



xxii A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS 

world, the value and importance of the child. 
We shall know the child best, viewing it 
through His eyes, and loving it with His spirit. 
Faithfully yours, 

A. A. Berle. 
Cambridge^ Mass., 
June 1, 1915. 



TEACHING IN THE 
HOME 

CHAPTER I 

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

To set out upon the business of training a 
parent teacher is not as simple a task as it often 
appears. That must be evident to all from the 
results which we get in the training of our 
public school teachers who are held to regular 
hours, regular studies, and regular discipline. 
The result even under these conditions to which 
may be added authority and other forms of 
direct control, is not always good or even cred- 
itable. In trying to discuss this matter with 
parents there are many difficulties which are 
not present in the situation just mentioned. 
Most parents are persons mature enough to 
know their own minds, especially with refer- 
ence to their own children. That often means 
that they are not teachable though they would 
be the last to admit it. Then again, they love 
their children often unreasonably and irration- 



2 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ally, and when they are very young, harmfully 
mistake their affectionate indulgence of the 
children for love of the children, when, in fact, 
it is nothing but laziness or self-indulgence. 
It is very much easier to admire your children 
than to train them! It is very much simpler 
to think of their present guileless and attrac- 
tive youth than their incapable and undisci- 
plined maturity. The parent as a subject of 
instruction is a very distinct problem, because 
the parent must operate from force of charac- 
ter not by reason of compulsion or external 
authority. There is nobody to call him or her 
to account and inflict a penalty if the duty to 
the child is not done. Superior authority 
yields but hardly to other authority. Army 
officers will tell you that a general officer is 
the hardest man in the army to command. He 
is used to giving not receiving commands. 
That is the reason. It is just so with parents. 
They are accustomed to give orders not to re- 
ceiving them. Hence they find it hard to do 
what they are told, even though they recognize 
what is told them as desirable and just. The 
wise and ambitious parent will keep this con- 
stantly in mind. With your own child you are 
liable to be warped in judgment, make excuses 
where none are possible, and invent reasons 
where none exist, for not doing what reason 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 3 

and conscience command should be done. 
Children come out of the exercise of the high- 
est and dearest affections and emotions of 
which mankind is capable. For this reason 
they need to be carefully guarded from the un- 
wise influence of those emotions. 

Then again, the parents, being subject to no 
rule but their own disposition, are constantly 
in danger of altering their plans for the chil- 
dren and their programs with them, to meet the 
changing conditions from day to day. They 
are aided in this, by the fact that the children 
are unable to make any effective protest. 
Thus a mother may plan to teach her child a 
given lesson at a given hour. Something oc- 
curs to her as desirable perhaps even necessary, 
in a qualified way, which conflicts with this 
arrangement. Nobody but her own con- 
science — that is, herself — can hold her to her 
task. Now, of course, this does not refer to 
emergencies which cannot be denied, but mere 
conflicts which could be met and provided for 
or if not provided for, could be resisted. What 
usually happens — I think I may say usually — 
is that the child is neglected on the subcon- 
scious theory that there is plenty of time. But 
what has taken place is the surrender of the 
program itself, the child as the major interest, 
and in time, this sort of thing will break up the 



4> TEACHING IN THE HOME 

program entirely. Nobody can teach, least of 
all a parent, in a desultory way. 

In a similar manner, the child often breaks 
up the arrangement by what seems hke indis- 
position or ill health, which in the parental mind 
is instantly exaggerated into a danger and the 
program abandoned. Real things, of course, 
must be heeded. But it is in times like these 
that the real battle is being fought. The child 
very soon learns whether the parent takes the 
duty seriously or lightly, yields it readily or 
otherwise and adapts itself accordingly, espe- 
cially if there is any natural disposition to re- 
sist specific and direct control. That of course 
is fatal to any effective work. Parents may 
be sure that nine out of ten such instances 
when they arise, come out of their needless 
fears. Stick to the program until the signs of 
trouble are tangible enough to be diagnosed. 
That is what your doctor would do. That is 
all he could do. Just see the program when 
you make it through, until something very de- 
cisive intervenes. The number of such things 
is very small. Practice makes perfect in this 
as in most things. 

The routine of the child training should be 
incorporated in the general routine of the home, 
precisely as every other thing is provided for, 
meals, recreation, sleep and the like. Not so 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 5 

to incorporate it is to leave it to caprice, acci- 
dent or inclination, any one of which is fatal to 
successful home training. Routine is not 
everything but it is the base upon which suc- 
cessful work is built. Regularity as to time, is 
as important as to mental training, as it is in 
diet and the care of the body. It is even more 
important, because the steady impact of the 
parent mind with the child mind makes for 
understanding and settles the preliminary mat- 
ters of disposition, ability to persist, skill in ex- 
position and reveals not only the defects of 
the child, but what is quite as essential to be 
known and understood, the defects of the par- 
ent. The mother needs to know her own 
strong points and her own weak ones as well 
as those of the child. Only regularity can dis- 
cover these and upon this discovery rests very 
considerably all efficiency. 

Steadiness and regularity moreover are ab- 
solutely necessary if the teaching parent is to 
know what measure of progress is made. For 
this purpose, a record of each day's experiences 
should be kept at least for a year. The last 
thing of each day, should be a careful reflective 
summing up of what the day has brought 
forth. If this can be done by both parents 
together, it will be more than doubled in value. 
Comparison of ideas and observations by both 



6 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

parents, brings both into the task and makes 
each the corrective of the other. It will be 
found also to make each parent more observ- 
ing, and in general, the father who will gen- 
erally be out of the home a good portion of 
each day, will be able at meals to test and com- 
pare results at given periods from his own 
standpoint. The mother can by daily com- 
parison, direct this observation by the father, 
and often find the reason for things which 
elude her because she is constantly with her 
child. It will be seen at once that this is quite 
as needful for the parents as for the children, 
though the benefits accrue to all. 

Wherever it is possible to alternate the par- 
ents in teaching this should be done. The rea- 
sons for this have already been suggested. 
But there is the special reason that it makes 
for unity of purpose and tends to organize the 
home for the intensive development of the child. 
It tends to prevent the development from be- 
coming one-sided. It affords the child an op- 
portunity for comparing, without knowing 
how or why, the differences of attitude and 
approach between the father and the mother. 
It softens the mental attitude of a child nat- 
urally tending to resistance, and strengthens 
that of a child which naturally yields. A 
"mother's boy" should have a good deal of con- 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 7 

tact with his father. A "father's boy" should 
have a good deal to do with his mother. Any 
one-sided development should instantly be at- 
tacked b}^ emphasis on the other. Wisely 
done this yields unity of family life and this 
atmosphere is the one in which the greatest 
development is secured. 



Coming now more directly to the principles 
governing the parent teacher, the first is, do 
not underestimate the capacity of the child, 
iYou will never accomplish anything in which 
you do not heartily believe. Take it as an 
axiom, that most children can do many times 
more of serious mental work than most people 
and especially their parents, give them credit 
for. Never permit yourself to doubt this. 
Most of the talk about overwork has to do, 
not with productive work of the child, but with 
the things which have nothing whatever to do 
with the growth and expansion of the child's 
mind. Many adult persons are tired out with 
meetings, social engagements and other worth- 
less things, which sap their strength and leave 
no increment of knowledge, experience or per- 
sonal quality. It is just so with the child. Do 
not let its energies be sapped by worthless 
things. Its play can be made just as produc- 



8 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

tive as anything else. Its social companion- 
ship should be looked to, not merely with ref- 
erence to relaxation. You know the story of 
the man who boasted that he had not drawn a 
pail of water for thirty years ? The simple ex- 
planation was, that he attached his well-sweep 
to his front gate and every person who came in 
and every one who went out had to draw a pail 
of water by that act. Make every act tell 
toward your main end! Nor does this mean 
that you are making a machine of your child, 
though that is exactly what you do with ref- 
erence to its muscular development. But you 
get the steady gains, small gains often, but 
always something gained. All this rests 
upon an unshakable belief that your child has 
large possibilities. Believe that with all your 
heart. Assume that no prodigy ever discov- 
ered is superior to your own child, except in 
the degree of attention which it received or the 
opportunities with which it was surrounded. 
Whatever skepticism there has been in edu- 
cational and other interested circles on this 
matter of child capacity, is rapidly being dis- 
pelled. But you can readily convince your- 
self, by simply comparing the work which is 
being done in the high schools to-day with 
that which was done twenty years ago. This 
is especially true when you examine the text- 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 9 

books on science. But it is hardly less true 
about everything else. That must mean sim- 
ply that children to-day have shared in the 
general advance in knowledge to such a de- 
gree that much higher work can be attempted 
to-day than was possible twenty years ago. 
But always keep in mind that the public school 
represents the lowest rate of advance. It has 
to provide for the lazy, the indolent, the in- 
capable, the vicious, and defective. That, 
you must understand, means a rate of growth 
which is necessarily very much lower than is 
possible to a normal, healthy child, reared in a 
home where the parents take an active, vigor- 
ous part in the home education. Dismiss, 
therefore, any doubt on this point. Of course, 
if your child is sick or defective or otherwise 
maimed, that is another question. I am now 
speaking of healthy, normal children. As- 
sume that the capacity of that child should 
be a generation greater than your own. As- 
sume that whether it gets that heritage de- 
pends upon you and you alone! 

For this reason you should never see "How 
much better our Willie gets along than the 
Jones's Willie." Compare, if you must com- 
pare, with the superior children of your ac- 
quaintances, those commonly supposed to be 
specially highly endowed, and find out 



10 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

whether this is true or whether there is some- 
thing at work for this superior child which is 
not at work for yours. In fact, never think 
about the inferiors in anything. Keep your 
mind steadily on the fact that not one person 
in ten thousand ever develops to his full capa- 
bility, by reason of the lack of careful over- 
sight and correction. Your faith in your 
child's capacity in this matter will very quickly 
communicate itself to any healthy, normal 
child. But it must not be simply foolish 
pride! It must be linked with steady and 
often rigorous discipline. The communica- 
tion of faith in himself to the young child is 
a great step toward the achievement of almost 
anything he undertakes. Therefore you 
should cultivate it and keep the ideals you 
have formed for the child steadily before him. 
If, for example, you are planning to send this 
boy or girl to college, let that be assumed from 
the beginning. Never argue it, just take it 
for granted, as "When you get to college," or 
"When you are in college," or the like, never 
opening the question as being a matter of 
doubt. Even stupid persons, very many of 
them, stumble through on this basis, because 
they never think of the possibility of doing 
anything else. The value and necessity of 
study as a part of youth should be assumed in 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 11 

just this way. Do not now imagine that this 
is a suggestion toward playing with this mat- 
ter. You must believe it yourself, because 
there is sound reason for it. Faith does all 
sorts of wonderful things, not only in religion, 
but in life. But here we are on the sound 
ground of experience. It will not do to start 
in "to see if this can be accomphshed" ! You 
must start in to train your child in certain 
things definitely, clearly, and effectively. 
You must keep these things steadily in mind. 
You must repeat them to yourself till you can- 
not think of anything else in that connection, 
and automatically set about it. This is exactly 
what you do in everything else. Do it here. 

President Eliot has stated with exactness 
what the elementary training should do. He 
says, "These, then, are the four things in 
which the individual youth should be thor- 
oughly trained, if his judgment and reasoning 
power are to be systematically developed: 
observing accurately; recording correctly; 
comparing, grouping and inferring justly; 
and expressing cogently the results of these 
mental operations/' ^ Get those four things 
firmly fixed in your own mind and see what 
kind of a grip they have on your own mental 
operations. How accurately can you observe 

'^American Contributions to Civilization, p. 219. 



12 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

things about you? How correctly can you re- 
cord those observations? How justly can 
you compare, group, or infer, from these ob- 
servations? How cogently can you express 
the results of these mental operations? To 
ask yourself these things is the quickest way 
to understand what you must do for your 
child. And you will be astonished to find 
how speedily these processes can be developed 
and with what wonderful results. But you 
cannot begin all this by saying either actually, 
or subconsciously to yourself, "Well, he could 
not be expected to see that," or ''He could not 
be expected to do that," and the like. You 
must expect him to begin right and steadily 
help him till he habitually gets on the right 
track. When he gets on the right track, 
things will go swiftly enough. The hardest 
part of this work is patience and faith in the 
beginning. Over and over again, you will 
say to yourself, "It can't be done," and then 
you must simply recover by answering, *Tt 
can and it has been done," and begin again. 
Your belief in the child's capacity for knowl- 
edge will grow by leaps and bounds, when you 
have once established in your own mind that 
you have it and have communicated it to your 
child. According to your faith, so be it unto 
you, is a sound maxim in this as in other things. 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 13 

Sustained ability is often developed by con- 
stant trying. Mere failure at any given time 
means nothing. The ultimate development of 
anything is what shows the real result. But 
you will not fail, because here is your highest 
task in the world placed entirely in your care 
and keeping, with you in supreme command, 
to make it or mar it. 

"Whatever success I have had in life," wrote 
Lord Westbury, Lord High Chancellor of 
England, "is due to the care and skill with 
which my father formed and disciplined my 
mind." ^ Lord Westbury was the son of a 
poor physician, in debt much of the time, with 
an invahd wife, who could give him little or no 
help, who, at six years of age was so sick that 
he was not expected to live ! Yet he was ma- 
triculated at Wadham College, Oxford, at 
fourteen, and graduated with distinction at 
eighteen, never having had the so-called "pub- 
lic school" education. It was the father's faith 
and pride which made this possible. "On see- 
ing the small, eager-faced lad in his round 
jacket and frilled collar, the warden of Wad- 
ham, Dr. Tourney, turned to the father and 
remarked that children were not admitted to 
the college. "You will not find my son a child, 
sir, when he is examined; moreover, he has de- 

"^Life of Lord Westbury, Vol. I, p. 11. 



14 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

termined to win a scholarship for himself," was 
the reply. "What," exclaimed the astonished 
warden, *'you will allow him to try for a schol- 
arship at his age? Do you know that he will 
have to compete with young men of seventeen 
and eighteen? You must indeed think your 
son a prodigy." "Sir, I do think him a prod- 
igy," was the proud rejoinder.^ 

That is the spirit which must inaugurate the 
work of the parent as teacher. Here was a 
case where there were few of the supposed con- 
ditions out of which "prodigies" come. Yet 
the father's persistence and oversight never 
flagging, gave to his son the care and the at- 
tention which produced one of the most re- 
markable lawyers of England. Nor is this an 
isolated case. Many such, of course, to a 
lesser degree, have come to my own knowl- 
edge, where the deep and abiding faith of the 
parent reacted as a most powerful stimulant 
upon the child, and this created power, where 
none existed before. The parental faith is not 
faith alone for the parent. It is mental capi- 
tal for the child, which breathes in, daily, the 
unshaken belief of the parent in its powers, 
and consciously and subconsciously organizes 
its little life to meet those expectations. Out 
of the effort come quick powers of comprehen- 

^Life of Lord Westbury, Vol. I, p. 13. 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 15 

sion and observation of the parental require- 
ment and thought which are both stimulant 
and fertilizer. 

II 

A second principle of utmost importance, 
is one which has to do with a careful and sys- 
tematic record of the child. No amount of de- 
votion can take the place of the matter of writ- 
ing daily, or at least weekly, a record of what 
the day or week has brought forth. The last 
thing each day after the conversation already 
hinted at, is that the teaching parent shall 
make a careful and accurate record of what has 
happened of importance in the mental life or 
exhibit of the child. Things that seem trivial 
enough as they occur, assume a vast importance 
when they are repeated many times. Nobody 
has the memory to recall all the interesting 
things that appear as lessons are given, or hab- 
its formed. Some of the most striking will lin- 
ger in the mind, of course. But, even so, they 
will hardly be remembered exactly, and will 
form the basis, unless carefully written down, 
of legendary tales. "Writing," says Lord Ba- 
con, "maketh an exact man." You will re- 
member, perhaps, that at the head of every 
patient's bed in a well ordered hospital, there 
is a chart which records temperature, pulse, diet 



16 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and various other things, so that the examin- 
ing physician on his rounds can know exactly 
what has occurred in the previous twenty-four 
hours, and be governed accordingly. You 
will observe, too, that these things are con- 
nected by a line which, at a glance, shows 
whether the temperature went up or down, or 
remained stationary. Something of the same 
kind should be done by the parent-teacher, es- 
pecially as regards certain things which will be 
mentioned hereafter. With a little child, the 
first use of new words should thus be recorded. 
The unusual happenings of speech, singular 
questions, moments of quickness or moments 
of dulness, and the subjects in which they oc- 
cur, should be thus recorded. The things that 
enlist interest most quickly should be set 
down, and the things where most effort is 
required should be similarly noted. These 
are but a few. But in any case there should 
be a record of observation. This is not only 
interesting in itself, but may, as it grows, 
indicate with almost absolute precision how 
further progress is to be made. It may show, 
for example, what subjects require the least at- 
tention, and those which require most, and thus 
simplify the matter of expenditure of time. 
It may indicate, as it grows, with precision 
the line of further development. It may re- 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 17 

veal special aptitudes and inclinations. It 
may show recurrence of moods. It may show 
subjects around which habits of resistance 
most readily form, and all this is most valu- 
able, not merely for saving time, but for get- 
ting results. 

How important this is may be judged from 
another illustration from the field of medicine. 
Formerly, when an operation was performed, 
it was thought needful merely to supply good 
conditions, and careful provision for the per- 
formance of the operation itself. Now it is 
the rule in well-appointed hospitals, before any 
operation is performed, to make a careful and 
complete inventory of everything in the room 
and check up after the operation everything 
that is left! Why was this necessary? Sim- 
ply because even skilled men, actuated by the 
very best intentions possible, were not able to 
remember everything, and often sponges, some- 
times instruments, and sometimes still other 
things, were left in the wounds, and infinite 
damage done to the patient. Wise doctors do 
not take these risks any longer. Hence a 
careful and complete record! Precisely the 
same principle applies here. Write what you 
find from day to day. Defects of enunciation 
or vocalization are most important to be noted, 
and corrected. The progress of their elimina- 



18 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

tion can be noted only by going back over the 
record, to find out what has been the experi- 
ence of the past. It must not be supposed, let 
me say in passing, that this is a hardship. It 
will, in fact, be found a genuine pleasure as it 
grows, because the parent will often find it as 
true an index of herself, as of the child. She 
has thus an absolutely true transcript of her 
own fidelity and devotion, and to a certain de- 
gree, of her own efficiency. She will be able to 
note whether certain efforts of hers have been 
successful or not. She will be able to see re- 
sults which will encourage and cheer, to say 
nothing of making a personal study which may 
be of high value to others when it is complete. 
Besides it may be a family possession which 
may become priceless. 

Write then, and write freely. Do not be 
afraid of recording trivial things, because 
many things seem trivial and unimportant 
which are not so at all. Just consider how 
they do these things in a psychological labora- 
tory. Here they will take a worm, for ex- 
ample, and carefully try out all sorts of experi- 
ments with it, watch every movement, and 
make an accurate and detailed record of it. 
How long it took to find the hole out of the 
little box where there was a light, how long it 
took to find out that it must not go to a hole 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 19 

where there was a httle electric wire which 
gave it a slight shock, how long it took to de- 
velop this habit, or that habit, and the like. 
Now, if it is worth while to do that for the sake 
of human knowledge with a worm, what ought 
a parent to be willing to do for a child? Simi- 
larly, think how laboriously investigators have 
to watch, day after day, plants, animals, and 
other natural phenomena, many days, with no 
result at all, apparently, except the lapse of 
time. Surely the parent ought to be willing 
to give a fraction of such attention to the child! 
Or, think how laboriously animal trainers take 
time and effort to train horses, dogs, and even 
fleas, to get a certain result. Now, if it is 
worth while to write down daily all these 
things for a horse or a dog, it ought to be pos- 
sible to get a parent to write down every day 
what is of highest interest in the life of a child. 
Keeping a record develops habits of obser- 
vation in the parent which will become more 
valuable the more they are exercised. These 
habits will appear in other things besides the 
child training, and will influence, and often 
revolutionize, the household life. "You see 
that young woman over there," said an attrac- 
tive young mother to me some time ago. "I 
grew up with her, and I don't think I ever 
heard a serious bit of conversation from her in 



20 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

my life, until she began to take up the inten- 
sive training of her baby. From a mere but- 
terfly, she has become one of the superior wom- 
en of this town." That was interesting 
enough, but by and by, I drifted around to the 
"transformed butterfly" in question, and in a 
confidential moment she turned to me and said, 
pointing out the recent commentator upon her 
own habits, "You see that young woman over 
there? I grew up with her. She never had 
any serious aims in life, but since she took up 
the careful training of her little boy, she has 
been made over." Comment is needless. 
Here were two people who recognized the 
transformation in others, but were not con- 
scious of their own. The interesting thing to 
me was that they were developing remarkable 
powers in connection with the training of their 
babies. I had laid down certain rules for 
them, a year or two before, and they had been 
faithfully following them. They got quite as 
much out of it as their children! 

It is important to write all these things 
down, because that fixes them in a form which 
can readily be consulted. It makes the work 
of comparison very much easier. In fact, 
trusting to memory in these matters is entirely 
futile. Most men do not even know with ex- 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 21 

actness the ages of their children, and have to 
think about their birthdays and the Hke. It is 
even less probable that they could recall other 
things in connection with their mental develop- 
ment. Such a record, kept over a period of 
two years, will yield invaluable material for ex- 
tending the area of knowledge both about the 
parent and the child. Much of the so-called 
"advanced work" in universities is, in fact, 
nothing more than this, except that the ob- 
server is a trained observer. The difference be- 
tween a good physician and a poor one usually 
follows this line of their training, other things 
being equal. Leave nothing to accident or 
chance. Don't trust that the interesting char- 
acter of any occurrence will bring back the cir- 
cumstances surrounding it. Write, and write 
often, and fully, and write everything you can 
think of about the subject matter. Some of it 
may be worthless, of course. But much of it 
will be valuable and you will soon distinguish 
between what is worth recording and what has 
no value. But in any case write! There are 
also many incidental benefits from this 
process. Your own memory will be strength- 
ened by it, and you will find your own growth 
in clear and cogent expression showing itself. 
All this will reflect itself in your dealings with 



g2 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

the child. You will learn to be precise, clear 
and brief. Words will mean more to you, be- 
cause you will choose them more carefully. 

Ill 

Discipline and interest come next in the mat- 
ter of subjects of fundamental importance. 
The subject of discipline is a very large one and 
it is not the intention to take it up fully here. 
But one general rule may be laid down which 
should be very deeply considered. Conflict 
which leads to or requires physical correction 
should be avoided if it possibly can. But if the 
question of ultimate authority is raised, there is 
but one thing to do, and that is, to put it 
plainly, win. But the main use of the superior 
mental power of the parent teacher is to pre- 
vent such a conflict from arising. This does 
not mean cajolery or coaxing or bribing or any 
other expedient that is really nothing more or 
less than yielding to the child, but the careful 
foreseeing of such possible troubles and pre- 
venting them from coming to a head, by creat- 
ing interest in the subject in hand, or changing 
the subject, or avoiding the final issue. But 
keep in mind that this does not mean that au- 
thority is to be sacrificed or steady pressure 
relaxed! In Germany, the pressure is too 
strong, in America it is too lax. Here we have 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 23 

yielded so much to children that we have sub- 
stantially lost all real authority and control in 
many cases. This is the source of so much 
juvenile delinquency. The Commissioner of 
Police in Boston, to meet these cases when they 
come to police attention, has proposed the per- 
fectly sensible remedy that instead of arresting 
and punishing children for breaking windows, 
destroying property and the like, that the 
parents should be arrested and fined ! That he 
thinks will settle the matter. This is my own 
opinion and gives the point to what has just 
been said. But in the case of little children, 
the first great instrument of power is the rec- 
ognition of obedience. Here, again, there is 
no disposition to destroy the child's personality, 
or prevent its full and free development. 
Quite the contrary. Nobody will ever know 
what freedom is who has not been taught abso- 
lute obedience. But this kind of obedience, 
that it may not become something worse, is not 
to be secured by brute force, though it may re- 
quire severe physical discipline at some point 
along the line. My own opinion is that most 
healthy children need a thorough spanking 
occasionally to remind them that there is a 
higher power than individual inclination or 
caprice. But be that as it may, the important 
thing is to keep the authority unimpaired. 



24 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

Discipline is itself a part of teaching. Pa- 
tience, self-control and especially the use of 
superior knowledge, and the understanding of 
the child better than it understands itself, will 
usually supply the means and the method by 
which the ultimate appeal may be avoided. It 
should be avoided at all hazards if it can be. 
The best way to set about this is good humor 
and especially the use of other interests. The 
natural curiosity of any child is readily excited, 
and when the tension grows hard, then the test 
of devotion and skill comes for the teacher. 
Then is the time to bring up your reserves. 
Bring out the interesting things you know, 
weave your own experiences into the subject, 
call to your aid something that demands action 
on the part of the child, give it something to do 
with its hands, and deflect the course of things 
away from what is making the tension. That 
is what a superior mind is for chiefly in this 
world, anyway. Only the weakest and least 
disciplined minds are always facing eventuali- 
ties. Larger minds know that there is noth- 
ing really final in this world, and keep the ques- 
tion open. Time settles many things and in 
the matter of the relation of the teaching 
parent to the child, many things must be taken 
into account. Often seeming resistance 
merely means that the diet is bad or that some 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 25 

other untoward circumstance is upsetting 
things. But even at such times be very care- 
ful that your authority is not being lost. Most 
children take from their parents severe disci- 
pline, with the feeling that the very relation 
makes it probably right. The natural love be- 
tween the parent and child makes it possible 
for the parent to do what nobody else in the 
world can do. Decisive measures leave least 
pain. Don't spin out punishment. In fact, 
don't spin out anything. Sharp, short and de- 
cisive is a good rule here as in other matters. 
But in the main the principle is that the greater 
knowledge of life, the greater knowledge of the 
child itself which is possessed by the parent, 
should so shape up the relations that the con- 
flict is avoided in any acute way. 

This result can generally be attained best by 
holding in reserve the things known to be spe- 
cially interesting to the child. When a matter 
begins to go hard, especially with a little child, 
it may be a sign of w^eariness and there should 
be no heavy pressure in that case. If it is 
merely wandering in mind, showing that the 
subject has lost interest and something else is 
appealing and creating resistance, then the case 
becomes one where it is a question whether the 
parent can interest the child more than it can 
interest itself. Of course the main object in 



26 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

teaching at all is to interest the child in what 
you want him to know and do. That is your 
problem. If he can get more interest in some- 
thing he himself devises or while you are talk- 
ing, forget you and your matters to watch or 
attend to something else, it is still your prob- 
lem, because you ought to be able to think 
more quickly than he and keep a considerable 
distance ahead of him. Every teacher in 
school knows this. But you have a better op- 
portunity than the school teacher, because you 
are at home and have one, and she has little or 
no authority over her pupils, and has forty! 

Then, study up interesting things. This 
means fertilizing your own mind and storing up 
interesting things. You are reading a news- 
paper and read something that you thought of 
interest. Clip it and put it by. Have it at 
hand for any emergency. The European War, 
the Italian earthquake, the innumerable stories 
of the habits, manners, customs, dress of the 
many lands now in turmoil, or hereafter trying 
to get settled again, will all furnish abundant 
material. Our own land has thousands of 
"thrillers" in its history and development. 
Learn some of them if you don't know them, 
but in any case have them at hand. A young 
assistant in Radcliffe College recently an- 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 27 

nounced to the freshman class that the instruc- 
tor "felt no obligation to make the course inter- 
esting." No mature person needs to be told 
that he is very young and that everybody is 
finding that course extremely stupid and will 
be glad when it is over! But whether a course 
in college should be interesting or not there is 
no doubt that with the balance so vastly in your 
favor there is no excuse if you do not make 
your instruction interesting to your little child. 
You have many years the start and with your 
superiority in mind and maturity, there is not a 
shred of reason why you should have any diffi- 
culty, provided always there is the will to do the 
work. There is nothing that so instantly com- 
mands a child's attention as when the father 
begins, "When I was a boy," because this is 
personal, concrete and has all the elements of 
interest ready made. What would you not 
give if somebody had made such a record as I 
have suggested about you? Children love 
these things and the personal element is the 
most attractive to them. If they relate to 
books, travel, to observations and other ma- 
terials of knowledge, they can all be used to 
interest the child, not only for the knowledge, 
but even more for maintaining, without weari- 
ness, a steady pressure which is making slowly 



28 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

but surely the one instrument by which the 
whole problem will presently swing along by 
itself almost. That instrument is habit. 

IV 

^'Hdbitf' says Professor James, ''is the enor- 
mous flywheel of society, its most precious con- 
servative agent. It alone is what keeps us 
within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the 
children of fortune from the envious uprisings 
of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and 
most repulsive walks of life from being de- 
serted by those brought up to tread therein." ^ 
If you have not already his little book on this 
subject get it and ponder it well. Professor 
James told me that many thousands of letters 
had come to him, of appreciation for this chap- 
ter from his "Psychology." Every parent 
will be benefited by reading it. Now, the main 
importance of habit for the purpose which we 
are discussing, is that whatever becomes ha- 
bitual releases the attention for new things. 
This is why you don't have to think about num- 
berless things about dressing or eating or going 
about your daily tasks. They have become 
matters of habit and you do them without hav- 
ing to think about them. But there was a 
time when you did not walk to your dress- 

^ Psychology. William James, Vol. I, p. 121. 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 29 

ing table in the dark, as you do now un- 
erringly! There was a time when you did 
not know exactly how your hat was go- 
ing to look when set on at a certain angle, 
or in a certain way! Frequency in doing 
it has made it possible for you to do it at the 
theatre, without a glass and to do it exactly 
right, too ! The same rule applies to the mind. 
The habit of expecting to do certain things, at 
a certain time, to submit to instruction and to 
make certain efforts, begins very early in life. 
Much earher than most persons yet believe! 
The value of habit lies, for this purpose, that it 
releases the mind for attention to other things, 
saves time and strength and friction and a 
great variety of other things. I need not say 
how important it is in the matter of behavior 
and conduct. Therefore make the habits of 
the child its friends, not its enemies, as I sup- 
pose you have made your own habits your 
friends and not your enemies ! 

You have doubtless observed the close resem- 
blance in manners, often, between some parents 
and their children. The imitative faculties of 
little children are very strong. Give them 
something worth imitating and make that de- 
sire to imitate a habit. This done in the mat- 
ter of speech, for example, is all the difference 
between clean, careful and precise utterance 



BO TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and slovenly, clumsy and unattractive vocaliza- 
tion. And here I venture a suggestion that 
nothing will so make for the kind of mental 
habits, and aid gaining the knowledge and the 
development of intelligence which we want, as 
the systematic effort to win the admiration of 
the child not only for the matter, but the man- 
ner of your instruction. Though it may not 
know the reason, the child knows when a mat- 
ter comes with all the force and skill of the per- 
sonality behind it. You yourself know it, and 
cannot help conveying that knowledge if you 
have made special preparation for the event. 
Was any woman ever well-dressed without be- 
ing conscious of it? Did she ever have to ap- 
pear not at her best without being conscious 
of that? And did she not know that every 
other woman present knew exactly how she 
felt? Was there not a deft and penetrating 
truth in the witty saying of the Cambridge 
woman who said that there was "a conscious- 
ness of repose in the knowledge of being well- 
dressed which even religion could not bestow"? 
I have often seen children stand off in a corner 
and admire their parents in a detached kind of 
a way which was very suggestive. But con- 
versely, I have also seen children cringe and 
blush for their parents, which was also very 
suggestive ! Be very sure that the contrasts be- 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 31 

tween yourself and some other parent are not 
lost upon your children. Therefore be worthy 
of their admiration, even though they may not 
know upon what it is based. The emotions 
have an office here, which is not very clearly 
understood yet, I think. We all like to see 
those we love appear well and are grieved if 
they do not. A normal child has much this 
same feeling about its home, its parents and 
everything pertaining to both. Now if the 
child sees your own mind working smoothly 
and beautifully, if it sees you pouring out of a 
full mind interesting things and showing how 
much you have profited by being in the world, 
the very first sensation is, "I'd hke to be like 
that," and your office is to take that desire, ele- 
mentary though it be, and organize it into a 
purpose of the will, and hold it down long 
enough to become a habit. 

This leads me to speak of the thousands of 
letters I received after the publication of "The 
School in the Home," in which parents urged 
me to write this little book and pleaded their 
own incompetence for the task. They all 
wanted some fixed rule to follow. They 
all craved a guide. This very fact made me 
hesitate about writing one for the reason that 
many such persons now having this one will 
simply do what it says instead of doing the 



S2 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

more important thing of fertilizing their own 
minds and being themselves the greatest in- 
centive to their children to become what they 
wish them to become. But that will be a great 
mistake. The greatest single influence is 
going to he yourself, your patience, your indus- 
try, your habits, and your attractiveness. 
Most people, even parents, think they can let 
down in these things in the presence of chil- 
dren. If you must let down, choose any other 
society, because older people can make excuses 
and qualifications which children cannot and 
should not. Give your best and grow from 
that onward. You will find the world taking 
on new interest to you, because you will be see- 
ing it all over again with the child's eyes. 
But all this must be reduced to system. You 
cannot keep on furnishing beauty pictures of 
animated, well-informed mentality forever. 
There is a limit for even the most capable. 
But you can do it long enough to make the 
habits you want established and then you may 
do something else. Very probably, by that 
time, you will have become so habituated to the 
practise yourself that you cannot stop and will 
go on for the rest of your life adding to your 
knowledge, and filling your mind, and so will 
insure for yourself what you never dreamed of 
when you started, a beautiful happy old age 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 33 

with a well-stored mind, acquired and devel- 
oped under the happiest conditions possible. 

"A new cask," says the poet Horace, "will 
long preserve the tincture of the liquor with 
which it is first impregnated." A young mind, 
similarly, will get its first notions of mental 
habit from the mind which it sees oftenest at 
work. That is the reason why the parent 
should be the first teacher. The parent, 
whether father or mother, has the largest num- 
ber of reasons, to say nothing whatever of the 
affections, for impregnating the young mind 
with the tinctures which are to give taste to its 
subsequent life. And let no such person be 
discouraged by want of what is called "equip- 
ment." If half the pedagogy were thrown into 
Boston harbor, nobody would be the worse for 
it and many thousands of persons would be 
better off. I have nothing whatever to say 
against pedagogy, but I insist that, like all the 
sciences, if it is a science, and like all the arts, 
if it is an art, it was made for man and not man 
for it. Most of the early years of life are ex- 
perimentation by the child, by the parent, and 
by everybody else, that has anything to do with 
it. All that I am urging is that your experi- 
ments shall be educational experiments and 
that you shall bring your maturity and your 
experience and your failures as resources for 



S4f TEACHING IN THE HOME 

this little one. The moral elements of this 
matter I shall discuss a little later on in the 
chapter on ethics. But for the present may I 
say that, in the last analysis, this matter turns 
on the moral quahty of the parent, of ability to 
subject himself or herself to the self-imposed 
duties of child training. How much it shall be 
may depend upon circumstances ; of what qual- 
ity it shall be does not. Whether you have 
many or few accessories to your work, likewise, 
may depend upon your station or wealth. But 
whether you shall bring to this work fidelity 
and devotion, and prepare yourself for it with 
diligence, depends only on yourself. But even 
the accessories are easily obtainable. Books 
are nimierous and not costly. The average 
household will supply most of the materials 
for the handicraft and there is no need for ex- 
pensive materials from elsewhere. As I have 
advised you not to underestimate the powers 
and capabilities of the child, so I now advise 
you not to underestimate your own. Conse- 
crated parenthood brings with it a kind of ped- 
agogy of its own. Think what the mothers of 
the pioneers did and what they had to find out, 
without our costly and innumerable accessories 
of to-day! And think what men and women 
they reared! Of course their method will not 
do to-day, but their spirit will do in any home 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 35 

what they did in the wilderness! There is 
hardly a community that has not a library, how- 
ever small. Good books and great books are 
within the reach of almost every one. Read 
them, study them and make their contents your 
own for your sake and the child's. Nobody 
can do it so well as you. And after all, what- 
ever you get from other sources must be assim- 
ilated by you and made your own, just as what 
you bring to the child must be made its own, 
not by being pushed in by force, but planted to 
grow in its own natural way. I can close this 
chapter with nothing better than by the follow- 
ing quotation from the great Pestalozzi: 

*'In the new-born child are hidden those fac- 
ulties which are to unfold during life. The in- 
dividual and separate organs of his being form 
themselves gradually into unison, and build up 
humanity in the image of God. The education 
of man is a purely moral result. It is not the 
educator who puts new powers and faculties 
into man and imparts to him breath and life. 
He only takes care that no untoward influence 
shall disturb nature's march of development. 
The moral, intellectual and practical powers of 
man must be nurtured within himself and not 
from artificial substitutes. Thus faith must 
be cultivated by our own act of believing, not 
by reasoning about faith ; love, by our own act 



36 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

of loving, not by fine words about love; 
thought, by our own act of thinking, not by 
merely appropriating the thoughts of other 
men ; and knowledge by our own investigation, 
not by endless talk about the results of art and 
science." 

Thus it may be seen that the training of the 
child is not a process but a growth, and the rela- 
tion of the parent to the child, being an organic, 
not an artificial relation, affords the natural 
means for the symmetrical growth of the stem 
from the parent tree. What the branch shall 
be depends wholly upon the nature and nurture 
which it receives from the source from which it 
sprang. 



CHAPTER II 

ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 

"It is instructive," says a footnote in a very 
useful and inspiring book,^ "to study one's 
own vocabulary, making a list of (1) those 
words which we feel sure we learned in child- 
hood, (2) those which we have learned in later 
life but not from books, (3) those which have 
entered our vocabulary from books. We shall 
also find it useful to consider the difference be- 
tween our reading vocabulary and our speak- 
ing vacabulary." Here we have several very 
important things indicated, which the parent 
teacher will do well to observe at the outset of 
the task. This classification is suggestive be- 
cause it indicates how we shall secure the great- 
est measure of progress for the child and we 
can readily see the process by comparing our 
own experience. That there is a decided dif- 
ference between the speaking and the read- 
ing vocabulary will be readily perceived by 
everybody. But why should that be, un- 
less it is that the things we read about we do 

1 Words and Their Ways in English Speech, Greenough 
and Kittredge, p. 21. 

37 



38 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

not talk about? When a lawyer is speaking in 
a court room his speaking vocabulary is the 
vocabulary of the text-books or the law reports 
which he reads ; both vocabularies are the same. 
When a doctor is writing a medical report or 
addressing a medical society, his speaking vo- 
cabulary and his reading vocabulary coalesce 
in exactly the same way. What makes the 
great chasm which most people feel to exist 
between the words they use when they talk 
and the words they use when they read? 
Simply that they do not talk about the things 
they read or they do not read about the things 
they talk about or the latter are not written 
about and have no reading equivalent. Now 
as a matter of fact, it is just here that the busi- 
ness of the parent teacher begins. The reason 
why it begins here is that the distance between 
the reading vocabulary and the speaking vo- 
cabulary is usually the distance that has to be 
travelled before knowledge becomes organized 
and ceases to be mere miscellaneous informa- 
tion, having no relation or significance with 
reference to anything else. 

I have already discussed the matter of lan- 
guage ^ as such, but I am now dealing with 
English as the special instrument of intensive 
training. It is probable that few people asso- 

^ School in the Home, Chapter I. 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 39 

ciate the vocabulary of their maturity with their 
childhood unless as, in some cases to which I 
have referred, the professional pursuits of the 
father, for instance, were such as afforded pe- 
culiar opportunity to the child to master a 
special or technical group of words. But 
many more people do not associate their read- 
ing vocabulary with their childhood. And yet 
why should this be the case? What is there 
about pure and clear English that it should not 
be spoken by children? What is there about 
the vast majority of even so-called "learned" 
words that children should not know them and 
understand them? Nothing except that they 
are withheld from the child! But that with- 
holding is a costly process for the child, because 
organized knowledge, by which I mean the 
knowledge that is prepared for transmission in 
text-books and the like, is for the most part in 
this reading vocabulary. The longer the child 
is kept a stranger to it, the harder it will be to 
acquire in the end and the greater the time lost. 
Therefore the beginning of English training in 
the home should start with the deliberate choice 
of the learned or reading word, well knowing 
that speech in general will supply the popular 
word when it is needed. This whole subject is 
very fully discussed in the volume referred to, 
which I advise every parent to read. For ex- 



40 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ample take the choice involved between words 
like the following conflagration and fire^ select 
and choose, building and edifice, annihilate and 
destroy, stiff and rigid, try and endeavor, piece 
and fragment, teacher and instructor, air and 
atmosphere, and many others which are given. 
Now in comparing these synonyms nobody will 
be at a loss to select the words which are "pop- 
ular" and those which are "learned," if we may 
say so. The ordinary child will be very sure 
to come in contact with the popular ones, but 
when he reads he will as surely strike the 
learned ones. There is nothing about the 
learned ones which is difficult of understanding 
and the child that masters them first will have a 
great advantage over the child that comes to 
them later. 

Now it must be reasonably clear that if 
books are to be used in the later education, the 
first thing to do is to get the ability to read 
them. Therefore the child trainer will see to it 
that wherever a choice is possible, the choice 
will fall upon the word which will be used in 
books, rather than in colloquial assemblies. I 
think I have said elsewhere that half the chil- 
dren in our high schools cannot read their text- 
books, and this is undoubtedly true. Through 
our entire grade system we stick to the col- 
loquial habit when we should be making the 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 41 

book habit. But it should be made even before 
that, namely in the home. At first sight, this 
seems like making the home conversation stiff, 
and void of the vivacity which is said to be the 
chief charm of non-bookish talk. But my ob- 
servation and experience lead me to think that 
exactly the reverse is true. No conversation is 
so bright, so sparkling, or so enjoyable, as that 
which uses words with precision and enables 
the thought to play swiftly and with discrimi- 
nation upon the fine shades of meaning. 
Nothing enables one to use quotations with 
such telling effect. Nothing moves the mind 
to greater expertness or appreciation. One 
reason why an older generation had so much 
purer speech than ours seems to have was be- 
cause the fine old habit of reading aloud pre- 
vailed then, which introduced the reading vo- 
cabulary into the area of common conversation. 
Children heard their elders use not only pure 
speech but the dialect of knowledge. They 
gained from hearing poetry and fiction and ser- 
mons and classic literature, read at the family 
fireside, a great instrument of comparison 
which was a thought-builder, second to noth- 
ing. 

Obviously then intensive training must think 
first and foremost and all the time of English, 
and that not merely the pure English of pop- 



42 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ular speech but the English of books. Yes, 
books, but what books? Certainly not the 
"best sellers" and the cheap fiction, but the 
EngHsh of the classical English authors, of the 
statesmen and publicists, of the scientists and 
the discoverers, of the public speakers of repute 
and the like. Who these are does not need 
much exposition here. How shall this process 
begin? 



It is one of the happiest accidents for the 
English speaking nations that their greatest 
classic is also a book that has had the widest 
daily and almost hourly use. "We Ameri- 
cans," says Professor Barrett Wendell, "are 
English speaking and English speaking we 
must always remain. An accident of language 
and nothing more, this fact may seem to many. 
To those who think more deeply it can hardly 
fail to mean that for better or worse the ideals 
which underlie our blundering conscious life 
must always be the ideals which underlie the 
conscious life of the mother country and which 
for centuries have rectified and purified her 
blunders. Morally and religiously these ideals 
are immortally consecrated in King James's 
version of the Bible/' ^ Nor is this all. "As 

^A Literary History of America. Barrett Wendell, p. 8. 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 43 

English literature has grown to maturity the 
working of this law (the law of creative im- 
pulse) throughout its course has become evi- 
dent. The first impulse, we have seen, gave us 
the work of Chaucer; the second, which came 
only after generations, gave us the Elizabethan 
lyrics and dramas, Spencer and Shakspere and 
the final form of the Enghsh Bible. This last 
is probably the greatest masterpiece of transla- 
tion in the world; it has exercised on the 
thought and language of Enghsh speaking 
people an influence which cannot be over- 
estimated." ^ 

Here is the beginning point, therefore, for 
the mastery of English. What has been true 
of the influence of the Bible over English 
speaking people as a whole, is even more true 
of the individuals who have steeped themselves 
in its thought and language and have therefore 
become masters of its superb diction and shared 
in the endeavor of the translators to dip into 
the literatures of the whole world and incor- 
porate into it the best that they could gather, 
for this is exactly what the impulse that gave 
us the English Bible did. It is therefore the 
best and will remain for generations the best 
text-book of English that can be found. That 
it is so linked with the literary as well as the 

ilbid., p. 5. 



44 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

moral and spiritual ideals of the English speak- 
ing race not only doubles its value as a text- 
book but gives it an inestimable creative power. 
Now before books became as numerous and 
as cheap as they now are, the only way families 
could share a book was by hearing it read aloud 
just as to-day in the trenches a single soldier 
will read to his companions the newspaper that 
comes rarely to them at the front. No one 
who has not camped out in the woods and lis- 
tened to a good reader bringing the message of 
some classic, as the listeners sat around the 
campfire, will ever know the wonders that are 
embodied in reading aloud, unless it is they 
who have had the same experience at home, sit- 
ting at the knee of father or mother and had a 
similar sense of pleasure and satisfaction. 
The intensive training in English for which I 
am now pleading begins with reading aloud by 
the parent teacher, first and foremost, the Bible 
and always the Bible. And I mean of course 
the King James version, which is the one not 
only best known but the one which is embalmed 
in and irrevocably linked with the greatest 
epoch of English literature and which lives in 
every English masterpiece of any kind in exist- 
ence. Begin then by reading the Bible out loud. 
Take the parts which you know best and get 
some analysis of its contents which will tell you, 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 45 

if you do not already know, what kind of 
material may be found in its various books. 
Here you will find matter for every mood; you 
will find poetry and prose, history, tragedy, 
comedy, drama and allegory, things joyful and 
things sad, things for inspiration and things 
for instruction, but all of them classic and 
builders of thought and together forming the 
substratum for a full round reading and classic 
vocabulary. There is no one thing that will 
educate so much and educate so variously and 
educate so soundly a httle child as hearing daily 
read the English of the English Bible. I am 
not trying to direct your religion or make your 
theology! I am speaking now to the parent 
who wants to give her child the best training 
for the intellectual life. I know no way in 
which so many things may be done simultane- 
ously for the intellectual development of chil- 
dren as reading to them the Bible. Of course 
the reader must read well and understand- 
ingly ; she must not blunder along not knowing 
what is coming next and wondering herself 
what the words mean. But having chosen her 
material, and linking it consciously with what 
she knows to be the interests of the child, she 
has made for her the best instrument that could 
possibly be devised. 

The words which find a place in books are 



46 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

usually those of the class called "learned 
words," and the Bible is full of these. These 
same words are generally of foreign origin and 
the translators of the King James version 
consciously chose words of classical significance 
and for this reason every other language from 
which the learned words in the Bible come will 
be made easier by familiarity with its English 
derivatives. Hearing these words read will 
naturalize them in the ear and will instantly 
create an affinity in the mind of the child be- 
tween the word heard at the mother's knee and 
the Latin or Greek stem from which it comes 
when it meets that stem later on. This is, in 
fact, the simplest gate to Latin. Acquaint- 
ance through the English derivatives of a con- 
siderable number of Latin stems, will im- 
mensely simplify the study of Latin, and make 
it interesting where now it is stupid. But 
this process can be only made interesting by 
familiarity with the English, and this is the 
earliest and best way to secure it. Read 
aloud, then, constantly, and enunciate care- 
fully, using the lips rather than the throat, and 
making the distinctions of sound clear and pre- 
cise. This reading, for little children, should 
be slowly done, and when explanations are 
needed, freely given. The reading of some of 
the Old Testament stories are thus made the 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 47 

medium for telling all sorts of things, beside 
teaching English. They open the way to the 
largest capabilities of the parent. Personally, 
I should leave out the "moral" teaching in the 
reading hour, simply letting the story teach 
its own moral. You are thus freed from the 
everlasting dread of the hour as one of moral 
exhortation, which has killed so much natural 
interest in the Bible. The stories in Genesis, 
or even the sensational stories in the Book of 
Judges, may be permitted to stand simply by 
themselves. Of course, they may need a little 
preliminary explanation. Dramatize while 
reading aloud, and let the climax come just as 
you would wish it to come in a play. But re- 
gard it as literature read for that reason only. 
The rest will take care of itself. 

It will be most excellent practise in this 
connection to have the child repeat the story 
itself before taking up the next one. Notice 
how it will repeat it in the words in which it 
was heard, and thus gain the use of the words. 
Try in this manner the interesting stories in 
the Book of Daniel, picturesque and thrilling 
tales, which offer infinite pleasure not only in 
reading, but in listening to, when repeated. 
Be sure to make your notations in your record 
as to what happens when the child tells the 
story back to you. When such a story has 



48 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

been read, try to use some of the interesting 
words in conversation at meal times, and see 
if they awaken remembrance, and if they 
arouse thought. Here you will have much in- 
terest in noting what words linger, and which 
are forgotten, and also when mistakes are 
made, what the nature of the mistakes is. Not 
infrequently you will find the mistake due to 
your own intonation, or lack of clear enuncia- 
tion, and that will help you to avoid those 
things in the future. But you will have pleas- 
ure in this work possibly above anything else 
that you do. 

Next to the Bible there are many other 
standard English classics which may be read. 
Read poetry as much as possible, especially 
poetry that lends itself to rhythmic utterance ; 
standard passages from Shakspere lend them- 
selves readily to this work. They can readily 
be memorized also both by yourself and by 
the child. Select for young children passages 
that are picturesque, that convey something 
that can easily be imagined. Always tell 
its connection, if you read an isolated pas- 
sage. It is good practice, both for the parent 
and the child, to tell the plot or sub-plot of a 
Shakspere play as nearly as possible, by means 
of passages from the play from which the 
story is drawn. Don't simplify but amplify! 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 49 

That is, don't bring the thing down to the puer- 
ilities which are commonplace, but give expla- 
nations which will move the child to wish to ac- 
quire the ability and dignity of doing the 
things as it actually is. You will be surprised 
to find out how often this can be accomplished 
in matters that at first seem unlikely. 

Repetitio est mater studiorum. Repeat 
these things many times by reading them fre- 
quently, for this is the key to the development 
of the memory. Apart from this, you will 
acquire facility and comprehension in reading 
them, and you will read them better every 
time, with more feeling, with more discrimina- 
tion, and with better expression. All this is 
so much clear gain for the little listener. Not 
infrequently you will have a demand for an 
encore. Give it promptly, but never care- 
lessly, because that is the best evidence you 
could possibly desire that you are getting what 
you desire. Often it will be found interesting 
and satisfactory to ask the child to tell the 
story, as it usually will, in the terms in which 
it has been heard. Cultivate this disposition, 
because a good memory is not a matter of nat- 
ural endowment, as many people suppose, but 
a matter of habit and practise. Cultivate eoc- 
act memory. Do not let yourself say, "Well, 
he has the substance of it," because the sub- 



50 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

stance of it, at this stage, won't do. What 
you want is exact memory, because exactness 
in memory will be found of very great use 
later on, in things which depend almost solely 
on exact memory, like the multiplication table 
and mathematics, generally, which have very 
little to do with education as such. But re- 
peat and repeat again. But let it not be vain 
repetition, but each time more intelligent, 
more discriminating, and more reflective. 
Often the child itself will note the changed 
emphasis, and ask the reason why. Be ready 
to give it. 

There are many kinds of memory which it 
is worth while to know something about. 
There is visual memory, which comes from see- 
ing things repeatedly, and remembering how 
they look. Many persons commit pages to 
memory by their appearance, recalling how 
the words look, and about where they ought to 
come. For little children, of course, who can- 
not read, this is not usable at the first stages. 
When children can read, it should be culti- 
vated. But the earliest form is that acquired 
through hearing. Before written language 
came into existence, this is the manner in which 
history, literature, and folk-lore were trans- 
mitted, one generation repeating to another 
what it had heard. In the Bible, the Israel- 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 51 

ites are often enjoined to remember things, 
that "ye may tell it to the generation follow- 
ing." The Homeric poems are said to have 
been preserved in this way before they were 
committed to writing. Certain it is, that 
much of our knowledge of the ancient and 
primitive world has come down to us simply 
through the memory wrought by the hearing 
of the ear. Some teachers employ this 
method in teaching modern languages by hav- 
ing correct speakers make records for grapho- 
phones, that there may be no mistakes of pro- 
nunciation made. These can be repeated over 
and over again, and thus the ear trained to 
recognize the correct forms. The parent- 
teacher gets the same result by reading out 
loud, but with the human interest and the op- 
portunity for interrogation and explanation 
added. 

The aural memory is more potent than any 
other in childhood, because it brings to its as- 
sistance all the natural interest of the child in 
the parent. The reading mother conveys not 
only what she reads, but what she is, to the 
child. She unconsciously betrays in her voice 
and manner and emotions, to the child, what 
affects her, and what interests her, and what 
has significance to her. As a good reader, she 
cannot help doing this, and as a good mother, 



52 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

she does not want to help it. She knows that 
this is the way she is building up the closest 
possible bond between herself and her child. 
If she can memorize some of the things she 
wants the child to hear, and recite them, so 
much the better, at times, because then she vis- 
ualizes to the child what a gift good memory 
is, and the pleasure her listener experiences 
in seeing the mother do these things creates 
a desire to do them also. Sometimes words 
sound their meaning. For instance, you can- 
not say "whistle" without making a sound 
which resembles the thing. Wherever you 
meet a word which has the capacity for this use, 
link the thing and the word together. Sound 
and meaning going together fix the word, but 
do more ; they cause the child to be on the watch 
for other words whose sound and meaning are 
linked together. 

In discussing the subject of memory. Pro- 
fessor James says: "The first point to be 
noticed is that for a state of mind to survive 
in memory, it must have endured for a certain 
length of time" And again, "all the intellec- 
tual value for us of a state of mind depends on 
our after-memory of it. Only then is it com- 
bined in a system, and knowingly made to con- 
tribute to a result." ^ What this means for 

-^Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 643-644. 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 53 

our purpose is, that you must not expect that 
mere "touch and go" with anything will leave 
any impression on the child's permanent intel- 
lectual strength. That anything may be 
memorized and leave a result, it has to be con- 
veyed clearly, slowly, and definitely. A cer- 
tain measure of time has to be allowed for it 
to sink into the mind. Repetition does this, 
but it should not be neglected on this account 
to read slowly, and with precision, at the be- 
ginning. The real value, as Professor James 
says, lies in the after-memory, which merely 
means that part, which remains after the con- 
ditions which have produced it, or in which it 
arose, have passed away. 

This is the explanation why so many things 
are so absolutely and easily forgotten. They 
were told all right, but told too quickly, and 
not allowed to have their proper right of way 
in the matter of time allowance, and so soon 
passed out of the mind, just as they came into 
it. It is the time element which makes suffer- 
ing, for example. Pain for an instant is not 
recognized as pain. A mere momentary shock 
is never called pain. But when it has time to 
make itself perfectly clear, though the time re- 
quired for this is not long, its nature is clearly 
recognized. We never think of a brief, un- 
pleasant sensation as pain. In a similar way, 



54j TEACHING IN THE HOME 

we never think of a mere instant of pleasant 
sensation, as pleasure. The time element 
makes them both. It is the same, though the 
medium is somewhat different, with ideas. If 
you want a thing remembered, say it slowly, 
say it clearly, say it distinctly, and say it often ! 
Rapid speakers thrill the imagination and stir 
the emotions, but slow speakers, other things 
being equal, convey ideas, and influence opin- 
ions. The simple reason is that one gives a 
momentary sensation of pleasantness, the 
other impresses the message. 

II 

This whole process is made interesting by 
the careful study of the growth and variation 
of words from particular stems. A more de- 
tailed explanation of this matter is given un- 
der the chapter dealing with the teaching of 
language. For the present purpose, it is im- 
portant to note that words have a history, just 
like human beings. If they come from a for- 
eign language, they have what is called a stem, 
and from this stem many other words are 
formed, and this is due to the fact that every 
such change indicates the need for a new dif- 
ferentiation of meaning. All our prefixes 
and suffixes are due to this need. Every such 
variation shows that something has been 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 55 

added, or subtracted, or altered, in the root 
meaning of the word. Take for example such 
a word as position. Now just work out from 
position how and why you get corn-position, 
dis-position, ap-position, and then compare 
these with such words as pose, suppose, dispose, 
repose, and the like. Now, all these come from 
a common stem. Then add comparison of 
such words as positive, suppositive, appositive, 
and the like. From these many more can be 
worked out. Almost any Latin grammar will 
give the number of the principal stems, and 
the reading of almost any book will furnish the 
laboratory for the working out of many such 
analyses. The intelligent guide of young 
children, when one such word is met the first 
time, will immediately use all her own knowl- 
edge to bring to the attention and suggest for 
reflection, many similar words and derivatives 
from the same stem, and thus build up the 
habit of observing words in their similarities 
and dissimilarities. This can be made the 
most interesting practise for the child, and 
makes a dictionary one of the most fascinat- 
ing of books. While this is being done, the 
difference between nouns, verbs, adjectives, 
adverbs, and other parts of speech, can be 
taught, which will presently show to the 
teacher and the child alike, that grammar, so 



56 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

far from being a dull, uninteresting study, is 
one of the most rewarding, as well as one of 
the most alluring. 

It does not take long for children to become 
interested in this process, which is really a kind 
of elementary philology. Then again, almost 
any dictionary will give the origin of words, 
and this will give the material for many an in- 
teresting discussion and exposition as to how 
any word reached its present form. But there 
are not only words of this kind, but there are 
words that have lost, or changed their mean- 
ing, that is, changed their character. Some 
words which once had a perfectly good mean- 
ing, have now come to mean something bad or 
of sinister intent. Similarly other words have 
come up in the social scale, and now have good 
standing, where once they had no character. 
There are degraded words and there are res- 
cued words, and there are fossil words, all of 
which are to be met with constantly in books, 
and the study of English in this manner brings 
this out, to the constant delight of the child. 
But you will have quite as much pleasure and 
satisfaction yourself, if you take the trouble 
to do this a few times, and the chief result is, 
that the habit is formed of looking at the form 
of the word, and finding out what the original 
part of it was, and how much has been added. 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 57 

either in front or behind. It does not need 
any argument to convince the reader that, in 
this way, the science of grammar is made in- 
teresting, and for the most part, without the 
child's consciousness that it is studying gram- 
mar, and the immense value of this later on 
can hardly be overestimated. When the 
study of syntax is formally taken up, this 
preparation is most valuable, because it is 
really the beginning of syntax. It would he 
a good plan for the teacher to take half a dozen 
such words daily — though this is a large num- 
ber at first — and go through this process, and 
it will be found that the child's vocabulary in 
this fashion grows by leaps and bounds. It 
may be made almost a kind of play, but the 
important thing is that it is playing with real 
knowledge, and building up the one instru- 
ment by which knowledge is most effectively 
approached. 

The building up of the English base here 
suggested, should be carried on with every 
other study. If you are teaching history, let 
every history lesson be also a lesson in Eng- 
lish. If you are teaching science, let every 
science lesson be also a lesson in English. If 
you are teaching geography, let it also be a 
lesson in English. Keep this constantly in 
the foreground of all your teaching. By this 



58 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

persistent emphasis on the nature, origin, com- 
position and character of words, you are mak- 
ing a tool which will enrich every other study, 
because in studying that particular branch, 
the interest is increased by the observing 
watchfulness of the medium by which it is con- 
veyed. In this way the child will gradually, 
without knowing why, notice how words of 
general meaning come to have a special sense, 
and are used in that special sense quite as 
often as they are used in the general sense. 
How slang words become words of good usage 
in this manner is a very interesting study, like- 
wise. Use the dictionary a great deal, be- 
cause this is the beginning of the habit of con- 
sulting authorities. As a writer in Black- 
woods Magazine remarks: "A dictionary is 
not bad reading on the whole. It is much 
more endurable than a good many of what are 
called lighter books, and not much more un- 
connected. In the hands of a patient reader, 
it would form almost a course of study in it- 
self, and very far from a dry one; he would 
make the acquaintance in its pages with a good 
many English authors to whom no one else is 
likely to introduce him; and though this ac- 
quaintance would certainly, in one sense, be 
very superficial, it would not in that respect 
differ from popular knowledge in general. 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 59 

and would at least have the advantage of being 
accurate and critical, so far as it went in point 
of style." 

This is nothing more than the literal truth. 
Anyone who will read the preface to Johnson's 
Dictionary of 1755 will have a fresh and in- 
spiring renewal of respect for dictionaries and 
dictionary makers, especially if he will turn 
to "Grub Street," pathetically connected with 
Johnson himself, and find, as one writer has 
said, "The personal element verging on the 
side of pathos," as where Grub Street is defined 
as "a street much inhabit ated by writers of 
small histories, dictionaries, and temporary 
poems; whence any mean production is called 
Grub Street," and leocicographer , as a "writer 
of dictionaries, a harmless drudge." ^ By all 
means use and teach the use of dictionaries. 

Ill 

But in this process of mastering English, 
and getting the feeling for English words, 
there must be great care taken to avoid its be- 
coming mere verbal merchanics. The imita- 
tive faculties in children are very strong, and 
soon awaken a more positive force, called de- 
sire ; therefore, it must be kept in mind, that, 
unless you want to train a little prig who will 

1 Tucker, Our Common Speech, p. 114. 



60 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

simply bewilder people and make himself un- 
livable, all these acquisitions must be made 
really his o^vn; that is, he must be given a 
chance to exercise himself in them, blunder, if 
necessary, in them, but use them, and make 
them a real and genuine part of himself. "I 
would not only have him (the teacher) de- 
mand an account of the words contained in his 
lesson," says Montaigne, in his great essay on 
The Education of Children, "but of the sense 
and substance thereof, and judge of the 
profit he hath made of it, not by the testimony 
of his memory, but by the witness of his life. 
That what he lately learned, he causes him to 
set forth and portray the same into sundry 
shapes, and then to accommodate it to as many 
different and several subjects, whereby he 
shall perceive whether he have yet appre- 
hended the same, and therein enfeoffed him- 
self." What this means is, that as soon as the 
child begins to have any verbal treasures he 
shall use them in general conversation, and 
shall be made to apply the skill he has acquired 
in one direction in as many others as possible. 
"I would have the scholar narrowly sift all 
things," he adds, "with discretion and harbor 
nothing in his head by mere authority or upon 
trust." For this purpose, practice is very es- 
sential. Table talk is the very best time and 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 61 

place for this sort of thing. You can play- 
back and forth with language as you can with 
tennis balls, and can have all kinds of enjoy- 
ment and profit in the exercise with language, 
which will quickly incorporate what is learned 
into common and general use. 

Cultivate in this manner, the spirit and 
habit of inquiry and reasoning. What I have 
said in my previous volume on the subject of 
questions and answers, may be here used with 
telhng effect. Even a little child will quickly 
discern the different uses of the same word. 
Let it work out how the difference arose, and 
make occasions for the inquiry. This is what 
the Greeks did with their children, and we 
should do it especially with the mother tongue. 
Whether you have been teaching grammar, 
or geography, or history, cultivate the habit 
of having the child tell the result of its studies 
to the family, perhaps to the other parent, and 
let the child thus have the pleasure and the ex- 
ercise of being teacher of the things he has 
been taught. This will bring fluency in use, 
as well as clearness of ideas, and will furnish 
the best manner conceivable, for observing 
what the tendencies of the child are, and what 
to emphasize, and what to avoid. 

One of the commonest defects in this con- 
nection with young people is that they are per- 



62 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

mitted in replying to questions, or giving in- 
formation, to use ejaculations, or disconnected 
words. The corrective for all this is to re- 
quire and have all information spoken in com- 
plete sentences. That calls for a recapitula- 
tion in thought of what has gone before, clari- 
fies the mind, and helps to clearness and pre- 
cision in speech. It makes for reasoning 
power, too, because it calls for logical sequence. 
Do not permit your questions to be answered 
in a single word. Require them to be an- 
swered in a form which may be committed to 
writing, showing what the question was. In 
fact, it is evidence of a good answer to any- 
thing, that it indicates with reasonable clear- 
ness what induced it. Many letters, for ex- 
ample, are utterly unintelligible, because they 
are disjointed replies to something contained 
in a previous letter, which has either been for- 
gotten or is remembered so vaguely, that the 
ground has to be gone over again if the mat- 
ter is at all worth while. It would be inter- 
esting, if it were possible, to find out how 
many needless business letters are written, be- 
cause of just this failure to make clear in re- 
plies, what the subject matter or the particu- 
lar phase of the subject matter, the reply has 
reference to. In family conversation, where 
children are present, it is a good habit, when 



ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH! 65 

any subject is discussed, to pause when the 
material becomes too mature or complex, and 
explain what is being discussed. By this, I 
do not mean that the conversation shall be 
interrupted or made infantile, but when an 
unusual idea or word appears, explain it as 
you go along. It is then seen in actual use, 
and probably more surely fixed in the memory 
for that reason. 

With all these exercises and habits, taste 
develops, and on this point too much emphasis 
cannot he laid. The habitual use and hearing 
of good English not only makes good taste to 
develop naturally, but does more; it soon cre- 
ates impatience, with bad taste, and makes 
children notice false English usage and bad 
forms of speaking. Hearing good selections 
read to them regularly, and having these dis- 
cussed in good English, and then having the 
verbal sense steadily developed, there is 
formed insensibly a standard of language and 
reading which soon requires sufficient momen- 
tum to take care of itself. Good matter will 
commend itself, and the matter that is not good 
will lead to its own rejection. But here, as 
in other things, there should be persistence in 
getting rid of false conceptions of language 
and of words, and the models chosen should 
be of a kind which recommend themselves. 



64 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

Dwell on beautiful images in any work you 
happen to be reading, an apt illustration, a 
fine figure of speech, something that lends it- 
self readily to repetition and memorizing, 
and make all these practices work together. 
The results will be astonishing, even after a 
little faithful work, but it will be an increasing 
delight to see the imf olding of the child mind 
as the linguistic sense grows, and the pleasure 
with which its exercise is extended. Even the 
blunders made will be interesting, and often 
illuminating and instructive. But at each and 
every turn, whatever the subject, whatever the 
occasion, whatever the object, whether it be 
formal study, informal speech, or play, keep 
it in the region where it admits of noble, pure, 
and clean English expression. 



CHAPTER III 

GRAMMAR 

"Precision," says Professor Austin Phelps, 
"especially, is one of those products of schol- 
arly taste which is not apt to attract a man for 
the first time in middle life or old age. Youth 
must plant it, or it will not flourish in mature 
age" In opening the subject of grammar 
for young children, I suppose there is no 
doubt that this is the one which has gathered 
around it most traditions of dislike, unless it 
be the barren and worthless study of arith- 
metic and its adjunct senseless problems. 
But grammar, so far from being an uninter- 
esting study, is really a very interesting affair, 
especially if it be begun in the right way. 
And even more so, when it is allied with ety- 
mology, and the uses of words, and the form 
and derivation of words, long before formal 
composition is begun. 

Grammar is language conscious of itself. 
Usage, of course, makes for correct and gram- 
matical speech more than all other things com- 
bined, but attention directed to form and ar- 

65 



66 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

rangement and structure of speech, at an early 
age, makes for the kind of precision which 
makes the study of grammar interesting in it- 
self, and takes off the edge of the dreari- 
ness of the necessary preparation for the study 
of foreign languages later on in the course. 
The reason why the classics have dropped out 
so extensively, is, that young people who were 
brought to them had no linguistic preparation, 
knew no Enghsh to speak of, had no feeling 
for the use of words, had no appreciation of 
when a thing was well-said or ill-said, and that 
made all attention to such matters stupid and 
apparently useless. It was not strange, and 
it will not be changed until we come to the 
matter from a different road. 

What has just been said indicates where the 
study of grammar should really begin. It be- 
gins in the appreciation of style. I see peo- 
ple smile when I talk of appreciation of style 
in little children. But you can readily prove 
the truth of the possibihty of such apprecia- 
tion, by taking pages from various authors 
and reading them to children, and see what 
they like, and what they dislike, and then ask- 
ing the reason why. You will find, generally 
speaking, that a clear, lucid style which con- 
veys its ideas with the least confusion of 
thought, which says what it means, and says 



GRAMMAR 67 

it with clearness and force, holds the attention, 
and causes reflection about the matter of the 
composition, while a style that is involved and 
confused, does not produce this result. You 
will find, for example, that in compositions 
that are specially intended for young children, 
the use of adjectives tends to make for atten- 
tion and interest, while the use of successive 
clauses tends to destroy it. The newspapers 
have found this out long ago, and have worked 
it to the detriment of their readers. They 
make their reporters write crisp, direct sen- 
tences. They make them deal with concrete 
things. They enforce the use of names. 
They write around personalities. They use 
adjectives often innumerable. That makes a 
paper "readable" for many persons who other- 
wise would never read at all. 

Now this style culture comes from reading 
steadily, often a single author whose style is 
good. Franklin is said to have formed his 
style from the study and influence of Defoe. 
Professor Phelps quotes Max Muller as say- 
ing, "That a well educated person who has 
been at a public school in England, and at an 
English university, who reads his Bible and 
Shakspere, and all the books in Mudie's li- 
brary, that is, nineteen-twentieths of all the 
books published in England, seldom uses more 



68 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

than three or four thousand words in actual 
conversation." That is interesting as show- 
ing how easily the vocabulary may be ac- 
quired, which will meet all the exigencies of 
contact with persons like those described, and 
the standard in America is probably much 
lower. It has recently been shown that chil- 
dren can readily acquire the requisite number 
of words, and if they are interested in the 
words themselves, their arrangement and use 
through the medium of grammar is a very in- 
teresting process. What has made it unin- 
teresting in the past, is, that children and 
young people have known nothing about 
words! The very vocabulary of the gram- 
mars they were studying was unknown to 
them! This is true about most of the text- 
books children study at this moment. Once 
interest them in the units of language as ob- 
jects themselves worthy of study, the rest fol- 
lows naturally. 

The infallible test of style is, that one does 
not need to read a sentence twice. Of course, 
this rule may be pushed too far, and there are 
some sentences which must be read many 
times, whose style is good and whose wealth 
of meaning requires such intensive study. 
But, roughly speaking, clearness is tested by 
the fact that it requires no repetition. Every 



GRAMMAR 69 

time you have to ask yourself, "Now, what 
does that mean?" you prove conclusively one 
of two things, either your own defect of Eng- 
lish or the author's want of precision and clear- 
ness. You will find this defect many times 
illustrated in this book, and the reason is, that 
I am dealing with so illusory a problem, as try- 
ing to tell in words, what so often in teaching 
children I did with no conscious intellectual 
effort. I know exactly what moved me in do- 
ing the particular things I did. How to make 
that clear, so that others may be similarly 
moved, is not so easy as it appears, because so 
many elements were combined in the process. 
In cultivating and teaching the grammatical 
sense, you must keep in mind not only that 
you are to use language intelligible to the 
child, but at the same time convey what you 
finally want to he mastered, which is some- 
thing more than can be put into words. It 
must be assumed, therefore, for the purposes 
here in mind, that there is habitual reading 
aloud, and habitual effort to interest both the 
parent and child in words for their own sake, 
and the making of frequent experiments in 
such words, usage, entirely apart from the 
purpose of teaching grammar. Now, the only 
reason for teaching grammar is, that it will 
prove a tool for further linguistic study, and 



70 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

linking it to the process of formal education, 
and make the linguistic knowledge acquired, 
current coin of intellectual interchange. It 
is important not only to know it, but know it 
in such a way that it may be applied to the 
larger uses of education. Knowledge comes 
in this way only. Behind all real knowledge 
there is form and classification, and conscious 
choice of one thing, rather than another. 
Grammar is that conscious choice, applied to 
words, their arrangement in groups called 
sentences, clauses, paragraphs, and the like. 
It is both dissection and construction of spoken 
and written speech. 



Grammar with young children should be- 
gin with a careful, though simple, definition of 
words, as parts of speech. It may seem curi- 
ous, but on this simple classification man/ 
children of ten or twelve are very much in the 
dark, though there is not the slightest reason 
why they should not, long before that time 
have thoroughly mastered the rudiments of 
grammar. Now, the definition of the parts 
of speech has, itself, been made irritating and 
complex. Nouns may simply be called name- 
words, though when it has been made perfectly 
clear that nouns are name-words, the word 



GRAMMAR 71 

nouns should be constantly employed. A 
noun, I used to say to my own children, is a 
name, or something that stands for a name. 
Here you begin with all kinds of illustrations, 
perhaps calling for all kinds of objects, and 
having them named, and then having it under- 
stood that when such words are referred to in 
grammar they are nouns. You can do that 
easily with children of three, as I did. Hav- 
ing thus made it clear that a noun is a name- 
word, you can gather all kinds of nouns, and 
classify them, in turn, as having one or an- 
other kind of classification. I recall that the 
children had special pleasure in picking out 
collective nouns, such as fleet, flock, herd, and 
the like. But, in any case, make it clear that 
this noun is the visible symbol, the name of 
a thing complete in itself. 

In a similar way, a verb is a do-word. That 
is enough for your present purpose, and opens 
the field of words of action and gets the funda- 
mental idea safely established. You follow 
the same plan about all kinds of verbs, and 
you will not be surprised if your little pupil 
takes the words he has heard you read about, 
and link nouns and verbs together in simple 
sentences quite without any instruction what- 
ever. Wlien this happens, you may at once 
tell the child that when such a simple state- 



72 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ment is made, it is a sentence. It was on this 
account, that before the parts of speech were 
thoroughly learned, my children had turned 
simple sentences into various forms, and soon 
knew how to recognize a declarative sentence, 
an interrogative sentence, one that contained 
an eooclamation, and one that expressed a 
command. It used to be a great pleasure for 
them to try themselves out with this kind of 
play, and find out their limitations, and also 
what can and what cannot be done, with the 
same words. Just remember that you are 
simply making the child acquainted with the 
usual nomenclature of the science of gram- 
mar. That is your main business now, and 
everything else is clear gain. 

Having thus established your bases, you 
will build around them. In taking up the 
subject of adjectives, I used to take the word 
"adjective," and analyze it, and show what it 
meant, and so link adjectives with nouns as 
neighbors and dependents. The qualities or 
size of objects lends itself very readily to this 
sort of teaching. Sometimes, their form or 
substance made the thing more interesting. 
And so, by easy stages, the child came to rec- 
ognize that adjectives are words that tell some- 
thing about a noun. That is all they need to 
know at the outset, and it is a simple and un- 



GRAMMAR 73 

complicated idea. Upon that base you can 
build the whole conception of modifiers. The 
more adjectives you use, the wider your scope 
will be, and incidentally you will have your 
chance made to teach about the object itself. 
Color in this way is useful, because it comes in 
handily later on in describing birds, or plants, 
or animals, and helps to lay the foundation for 
the ideas of botany or zoology. Number tells 
also in the same way, as you count the petals 
of a fliower or the legs of an insect. In short, 
you simply get the idea fixed that an adjective 
tells something about a noun. Practice and 
play at this subject will be found a great 
amusement, as you explain why some kinds of 
adjectives cannot apply to some kinds of 
nouns. 

And just as you have fixed the word adjec- 
tive in relation to nouns, so you fix the word 
adverb in relation to verbs. An adverb sim- 
ply is a word that tells something about a verb. 
Here you introduce adverbs of manner^ de- 
scription, or what not, and group them around 
verbs. So the adverbial idea is built up, and 
it needs only a little practice to make the ques- 
tioning and the answering mutually interest- 
ing and entertaining. 

Sometimes I used to draw little pictures in- 
dicating the noun or the verb, and then group 



74. TEACHING IN THE HOME 

around them all the adjectives or adverbs ap- 
plicable to each, and march and counter-march 
them, picking up fresh ones as they were 
found applicable, or dropping those that were 
found not to be useful. Your main object is 
always to accustom the child to think of nouns 
as nouns, or verbs as verbs, or adjectives as 
adjectives, and adverbs as adverbs. Hence, 
when you use a dictionary, you always note 
what the part of speech is, so that the new 
word is classified from the start in its broadest, 
most general uses. That is getting gram- 
mar instruction by the wholesale, so to speak. 
Every fresh word thus takes its place in 
the general language scheme, and you build 
up the linguistic habit almost unconsciously. 
Merely saying this, gives the idea that this is 
very stupid formal work for four- or five-year- 
old children, but it will not be found so by any 
manner of means. Often, the children them- 
selves will break in upon you, and tell you the 
part of speech before you mention what it is. 
Similarly a pronoun is a word that stands 
for a noun. There is nothing complex about 
that. The personal pronouns are very readily 
understood. And because they are so readily 
understood, you can, in passing, teach all that 
need be known about number, because singu- 
lar and plural are easily grasped, and easily 



GRAMMAR 75 

recognized. At the same time, you can teach 
all that need be known about gender, because 
the masculine and feminine are ideas easily- 
understood, and applied almost with the be- 
ginning of speech. Neuter is a little more 
difficult, but taught simply as applying to 
things chiefly without life is all that you need 
to do with it. But you still see at once how 
many of the elements of parsing you have 
here taught, and how easily you can, in get- 
ting the child to tell all about a word, tell sub- 
stantially all that the ordinary high school pu- 
pil knows about it, and sometimes a good deal 
more. This sort of thing may easily be in- 
jected into the study of any other subject, 
and may be more informally taught than 
almost any other subject, as indeed it should 
be. 

Here you have already five of the parts of 
speech, and the principal ones. The rest can 
be dismissed in passing. About conjunctions, 
prepositions, and interjections, I taught sim- 
ply by examples. I kept, however, referring 
to them, merely to impress the name of the 
part of speech. Person, meaning the speaker, 
the person addressed, or the person or thing 
spoken about, you take along without compli- 
cating it with special definition. But you 
should occasionally remind the child of the 



76 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

first, second, or third person, just to keep the 
classification in mind. 

In all this, bear steadily in mind that what 
you are teaching is the nomenclature of the 
science of grammar, so that when your child 
begins to study grammar in connection with a 
foreign language, let us say, Latin, and from 
the beginning, the parts of speech are talked 
about, it has already, as a part of its own intel- 
lectual equipment, these distinctions made, 
and does not have to be told anew, and told 
stupidly, what the parts of speech are, or what 
their attributes are, or how they are related. 
Keep it simple, of course. But keep it clear, 
and keep it in the form in which it must be 
used later on. 

There is no objection to your taking up 
cases, if you find that you can, and care to do 
it — personally, I did it, and believe it to be 
useful in connection with the practice of show- 
ing how words change their form. In this 
way you show the difference between declin- 
ing a noun and conjugating a verb. A rather 
useful thing to know, and which, if taken up 
with the study of Latin, in an elementary way, 
teaches many more things than grammar. 
You have already, in your habitual investiga- 
tion of words, shown the varieties of form, and 
now you can show why they take on these 



GRAMMAR 77 

changes of form. You can show what a jprejioo 
is and what a suffix is, and the many kinds of 
them, and some of their more obvious uses. 
And thus, by easy stages, you prepare the way 
for something else, namely, the building up 
of sentence structure, and the elements of such 
structure, and their proper relations. When 
this is done, it should be done with the ma- 
terial the child himself supplies, by getting 
him to make some statement about some ob- 
ject or plaything with which he is familiar, 
and then taking the classification. Build sen- 
tences, and take them apart, just as you would 
blocks. 

In a similar way you can teach all that needs 
to be known about the article. The use of the 
and a or an is not difficult of explanation. 
Nor is the making clear of definite and indefi' 
nite, this, and that, as pronouns, very hard. 
Simply get the idea that the ideas of definite 
and indefinite are expressed in such words, 
and that is all you need to do at this stage. 
It will develop of itself a little later on. So 
also the use of interrogative words, which, 
what, where, and the like, are easily linked 
with the idea of interrogation, and that is the 
essential thing. 

When the child that has so much equipment 
as I have here outlined, fairly fixed in mind, 



7a TEACHING IN THE HOME 

before it is seven years of age it will never 
find the subject of grammar dull or uninter- 
esting, because the word sense, and the instinct 
for form, will have been so cultivated that the 
more formal study will lend itself to experi- 
mentation in the form of composition, which 
children love almost above all things. Of 
course, for a long time, this will be oral compo- 
sition, telling of stories, and I often used to 
make the acquisitions in some other study the 
means of getting this oral composition. 
When a child is invited to tell the story of 
anything, you have begun the subject of com- 
position, and if there are, as there were in my 
family, more than a single child, each child 
will often interject something, or modify 
something, or supply a missing word, or alter 
the form of the statement, which is the very 
best practise imaginable for formal composi- 
tion. Incidentally, it trains the ear also, and 
makes for a demand for pure and clear state- 
ment. While "The Story," which ran on for 
four years in our nursery, after the children 
had gone to bed, I used to listen with great in- 
terest, how first one child, and then another, 
added an idea, or supplied one, when the nar- 
rator for the evening ran out of ideas, or of- 
fered some obvious contradiction of something 
that had already been said, or that seemed in- 



GRAMMAR 79 

congruous with the narrative. I believe, that 
in that continuous story-telling to each other, 
the children got the best language training 
they ever received. I am very sure they got 
exactly what the freshman English teachers 
afterward tried to teach them in Harvard, and 
got it more explicitly and more effectively. 

II 

You will always keep in mind that you are 
doing all this merely to build up the use of 
the tool of knowledge. You will keep in mind 
that your main task in all these matters is to 
prepare the child for the use of books when 
he comes to the more formal and serious in- 
struction. You will, by this means, take off 
the strange, confused atmosphere with which 
the study of grammar is begun, and take out 
of it the stupidity with which the subject is 
often invested. Your little boy at seven, 
when he begins Latin, though he should begin 
Latin before this, but assuming that he begins 
Latin at seven, will not be staggered by the 
confused mess which usually confronts him, 
but will understand how language is made, 
and what its parts are, and why it is needful 
for him to know something about those parts. 
He will seek, naturally, the things in the for- 
eign language that resemble his own, and he 



80 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

will bring what you have taught him about 
his own language to bear upon the one he is 
about to begin. He will have in the back- 
ground of his consciousness a great deal of 
material which is familiar to him, and it won't 
seem so meaningless to him as it often does. 

I think it is a very good plan in connection 
with this study to master a good many words 
in a foreign language, Latin again, for choice. 
Any child can learn fifty Latin nouns, and 
these fifty will make themselves over into a 
thousand shapes in English. But their Latin 
form, and often its resemblance to English 
forms, helps to make the grammatical sense. 
It is not so easy with Latin verbs, though 
there, too, is a field worth your exploitation. 
If you don't know anything about Latin, 
study it with your child. That is one of the 
very best ways of going about anything. We 
had, or perhaps it would be better to say that 
I had, no natural interest in a good man}^ 
things till my children began to show interest 
in them, and since that interest was there, I 
cultivated it in its scholarly form. Thus they 
got the exact and accurate names of things the 
very first time. A friend of mine has taught 
his little girl a perfectly amazing amount of 
knowledge of chemistry, that being his field, 
by simply telling the child all about the things 



GRAMMAR 81 

he was working with at any given time. That 
httle girl, probably, after a few experiments, 
will be able to pass a college entrance examina- 
tion in chemistry before high school age. If 
the examination were oral instead of written, 
she would probably pass with a high mark. 
The lower mark will come probably, not from 
lack of knowledge, but from inability to write 
quickly in a given time and in a satisfactory 
manner what the child actually knows and 
knows exactly. But no single child should 
ever, on that account, be held back. Most peo- 
ple of mature years cannot write as well as they 
speak, nor use the skill and precision in writing 
which they use habitually in speech. 

While I am on this subject of writing, I 
may as well say now that all I have to say 
upon it. It was the weak spot of my own 
plans of training. But as I think it through, 
it was simply because I did not realize early 
enough that ultimately the tests must he made 
in writing. If I had to do it again, I should 
begin very early with writing, and make that 
go hand in hand with the mental acquisitions. 
Dr. Montessori has shown that it can be done, 
and I believe it can generally be done. But 
it takes more time than I had to give, and this 
because the exercises should be frequent rather 
than long continued. But as all examinations 



82 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

have to be taken in writing sooner or later, let 
this grammatical study go along with the writ- 
ing, and this, because it w^ill chiefly be with 
single words rather than long sentences, and 
hence may be done with less weariness and less 
drain on the strength and attention of the 
child. I do not believe complicated apparatus 
is necessary for this purpose. In fact, you 
don't need costly appliances at all. Your 
own skill and the child will supply almost 
everything you need, and just as a child al- 
ways loves its rag doll the best, so generally 
the things devised at home have the keenest 
interest. 

Drawing goes well with grammatical study, 
odd as that seems to sound. Tracing words 
helps to make their names and forms linger in 
the memory. Also supplies the "busy" work 
for recreation. Let the child copy by means 
of tracing paper, parts of maps, with the 
names, and then use these results in connec- 
tion with your instruction as to the names, and 
their relation to other things. 

In this discussion of grammar study, I have 
laid emphasis only upon the merest outlines, 
but you will determine yourself by the measure 
of interest aroused how much farther you can 
and care to go. I need not point out that 
while you are doing all this you are teaching 



GRAMMAR 83 

spelling and showing, as you go along, how a 
word that has one spelling has several mean- 
ings and how much pleasant information and 
experiment you can work up out of all this. I 
have often gone, while visiting a public school, 
into a third grade room, or even into a kinder- 
garten, and proved that you could beguile chil- 
dren by the hour with what was really serious 
and scientific knowledge about the language. 
And I have been met months after such a talk 
by the children who heard it who said to me 
that they remembered what I had told them, 
and proudly gave evidence of the truth of what 
they were saying. 

The analytic habit applied to language will 
also go hand in hand with the same habit when 
you deal with birds, insects or plants. And 
you get habits of attention, concentration and 
intellectual curiosity which are really what you 
are trying to make. The reason why you must 
do it in the way of formal terms, queer as it 
sounds to have a three-year-old recite to you 
that "a noun is a name word" and that "a verb 
is a do-word" is that you must get the child's 
knowledge into usable form for the educational 
mill into which he will presently have to go. 
The educational institution has to use the 
ordinary coinage of intellectual interchange. 
It has to have a certain standard of uniformity. 



84 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

It has to use the language of books and the 
formulas of science. There is no other way. 
Hence you must not only have the child learn 
the thing, but learn to express its knowledge in 
the form which is the only one in which the 
schools are able to recognize it. No public 
school can take account of the individual child 
to any great extent. Hence you must produce 
what they want and must have in the only 
way they are capable of recognizing it. It is 
sad that this is the fact, but since it is th,e fact 
the sooner you recognize it the better. 



CHAPTER IV 

LANGUAGES 

Language, as I have said in a previous vol- 
ume, is the tool of knowledge. All that is 
suggested in this chapter is to be taken in con- 
nection with what has already been said in the 
chapters on EngHsh and grammar. Though 
there are varieties of designation, generally 
speaking, the principles of one language apply 
to all. The parts of speech, though varying in 
their operation and function, are the same. 
The fundamentals of grammar are not essen- 
tially for practical purposes different. Hence 
what has been said about English grammar 
applies with equal force here. 

Now in teaching a language what do we 
notice first? Simply that long before lan- 
guages are written they are spoken. Hence 
language by the vocal method is the natural 
gateway. The reason why so much so-called 
language teaching in the schools fails is because 
the teachers have no consciousness of it, and this 
applies almost as much to English as any other. 
But while it is not possible that every teacher 

85 



86 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

will be able to use the language colloquially, it 
is possible to get such a grasp upon it, through 
perfectly natural methods, as will make the 
approach to it very easy and perfectly natural, 
taking away the strangeness and the hopeless 
feeling which comes to so many children when 
they attack an alien tongue. It is therefore 
wise and helpful to begin with things which are 
not strange and which do not make for hope- 
lessness, but which make for familiarity and 
hopefulness. This is best accomplished for 
little children in connection with their English 
and history. Here, through the narratives 
which you will read, the newspaper articles by 
which you will brief the news, which you will 
cull and give through the medium of your own 
information and understanding to the children, 
you will naturally come upon many things 
which you know well enough but which you 
have not transformed into what I have called 
negotiable knowledge. Let us say you want to 
teach German, knowing something about it or 
perhaps knowing nothing about it. 

Let us say that you are doing this while the 
great European War is in progress. Hardly 
a daily paper or magazine comes into your 
home that does not bring with it scores of Ger- 
man words which have now become so familiar 
that you know them by sight, and ahnost their 



LANGUAGES 87 

meaning. You hear or read such terms as 
Landsturm and Landwehr, or you see the ref- 
erence to a submarine as Untersee, or you see 
the names of cities hke Hamburg and Ludwig- 
shaven, or you see references to the German 
Tauhe or the KreuUer Emden or the Krieg- 
schiff Braunschweig and the like. Now it is a 
perfectly simple thing to take all these words 
made vivid by dealing with matters of natural 
conversation and discussion, and take a census 
of what you have gained by this excursus, as I 
now do, because I got all these words from a 
single newspaper article. And what have you 
secured? You have got the German equiva- 
lent for land, storm, defence, city, harbor, dove, 
cruiser, war, ship, under and sea, all at the first 
attempt. Now to make a hst of these and find 
their compounds, is to make a pretty interest- 
ing collection in the way of varied vocabulary. 
It is pretty much of a single character to be 
sure, but the striking thing about it is that it 
immediately starts the linguistic sense. To call 
an aeroplane a dove is an interesting fact to any 
child. Warship readily suggests steamship 
and sailing ship, and other kinds of ships. 
Think of the linguistic possibilities of Untersee 
when you divide it into unter, under; see, sea, 
and then into the well known submarine which 
again becomes sub, under suggesting at once 



is TEACHING IN THE HOME 

subway, and marine with the Latin maris and 
the English mariner, maritime and the like. 
And you got all this out of the article which you 
read at the morning meal as the news of the 
day! And for repetition you have these terms 
occurring in some form or another every day, 
making the best kind of practise for yourself 
as well as your child. What you thus do with 
German you can as easily and readily do with 
French. In a word you begin the language 
just as a child should begin it and begins its 
native tongue, by the use of it. 

Now that the Italians have gone into the war 
we shall have also references to the same events 
simultaneously in several languages — German, 
French, Italian, and Enghsh. What better 
opportunity could possibly be made for natur- 
alization in linguistics? And the knowledge 
can be visualized, too, because the words can be 
written down side by side and their resem- 
blances and differences noted. Almost any 
child can be made very quickly to learn from 
glancing down three parallel columns to find 
the related words or variants of the same word 
and put them together and when that has been 
done your lesson work is made for you. 

It is not to be understood that all this re- 
quires exceptional scholastic training or ability. 
How academic does one have to be to see the 



LANGUAGES 89 

resemblance between ship and schiff? Or be- 
tween haven and hafen? or between kreutzer 
and cruiser? Anybody with a fairly good 
ordinary education can do this, the only thing 
necessary is to do it. This can be done with 
hundreds of words in any one of the three mod- 
ern languages which I have named. If the 
teacher has even a little knowledge of Latin the 
work is made by so much, more interesting and 
a Latin vocabulary can be built up at the same 
time. All that is required is a little reflection 
and a little practice which very soon will grow 
to be a most interesting personal enjoyment as 
well as equipment for the instruction of the 
child. 

You will understand that what you are here 
doing is by easy and natural stages showing 
that the same facts have various forms of 
visualizing and uttering themselves. You are 
planning to take off the strangeness with which 
a child for the first time, having had no pre- 
vious experience, hears a strange language. 
And by taking away that foreign feeling you 
at once stimulate the ears to catch resemblances 
and listen for suggestive sounds and the eyes 
look for suggestive signs by which one equiva- 
lent may be exchanged for another. I have 
taught very young children a hundred words in 
two or three languages in a day, in this fashion. 



90 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and the knowledge thus gained made them 
proud of their equipment and made the acqui- 
sition of the next hundred a joy to them and 
to me. 

The simplest manner of doing this will be by 
means of word-lists which are now very easily 
obtainable in almost any language, and select- 
ing the words which by reason of sound and 
appearance most nearly resemble English. 
In fact learning a foreign language begins 
with the mastery of a vocabulary just as it 
does with the vernacular. The less a child 
has to think about what the words mean, the 
more readily it can begin to think about the 
relations of the words to each other in the 
structure of the language, and the more read- 
ily you can begin to teach that structure in 
the form of grammar, and this applies to all 
languages alike. Professor W. R. Harper, 
afterward President of the University of 
Chicago, literally revolutionized the study of 
Hebrew by means of his word lists, in which 
he simply took the words that are most fre- 
quently used in the Hebrew Bible and created 
the materials out of which the language, as 
such, was studied. If on a given page for ex- 
ample a single much-used word occurs 100 
times and there happen to be 1000 words on 
that page, you have hy mastering that word 



LANGUAGES 91 

learned one-tenth of a whole page. So by 
taking the most used words of any language, 
and learning these, you annex whole acres of 
text-books because the same word occurs many 
times. The acquisition of a working vocabu- 
lary in this manner is really a very simple thing, 
and when it has been done you have the ma- 
terials for language study. This is really what 
you do in your home, and without knowing it, 
when your child first begins to talk. You sim- 
ply give to it the working words, hot^ cold, look, 
and the like. You can do much in this way 
that will make any language attractive, and if 
you choose one with which you have some famil- 
iarity yourself, the task will be simpler and 
more interesting. 

I have just referred to German words. I 
have before me a very interesting word list 
prepared by one of the best elementary teach- 
ers in the land. Dr. H. C. Bierwirth of Har- 
vard University. From this list of 270 of the 
commonest nouns I select the following just to 
show that one does not need to know much, or 
indeed anything, about German, as such, to see 
instantly how an Enghsh and a German word 
may be acquired together by a very young 
child. Here are such words as apfel, apple, 
arm, arm, hett, bed, hlut, blood, hrot, bread, 
hruder, brother, ding, thing, dohtor, doctor. 



92 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

general, general, grab, grave, hand, hand, hilfe, 
help, hut, hat, mond, moon, nacht, night, paar, 
pair, prinz, prince, rose, rose, schild, shield, 
schaf, sheep, tochter, daughter, vater, father, 
wagen, wagon, wasser, water, welt, world, 
wunsch, wish, — just to select at random from 
the alphabetical list. Now just look at the 
variety of words given here which almost inter- 
pret themselves. The same thing may be done 
with other parts of speech, these being simply 
nouns. But what you do in this case is some- 
thing more than merely to learn word equiv- 
alents. You are establishing the fact that 
there is a natural linguistic affiliation between 
English and German. As you teach English 
these resemblances will constantly appear and 
you will, in whatever language you are teach- 
ing, and in fact whatever you are doing, build 
up linguistic power in the form of negotiable 
vocabularies. The importance of this cannot 
possibly be overestimated for purposes of gen- 
eral culture and reading knowledge and power. 
As a mind fertilizer this process has possibilities 
which are simply without limit. Five or six 
hundred words thus acquired in early child- 
hood will readily be made the basis for use in 
language study which will make all subsequent 
work a joy instead of drudgery, because there 
will be in existence already a linguistic con- 



LANGUAGES 93 

sciousness which will be always reasoning from 
what is obviously clear to something that has 
fascinating possibilities. 

From the singulars given above, it is an easy 
and natural step to the plurals, and through 
this process to the genders all the while without 
recourse to formal grammar, but merely in the 
way of fertilizing and scouting on the frontiers 
of the ultimate minute study of the language 
structure. The trouble always comes in cross- 
ing the frontier of anything. Once you have 
really crossed the border line, the march is 
easier. 

Turning now from a modern language to an 
ancient one, namely, Latin. Here the thing is 
of much greater importance, because Latin is 
the base of so much English and is notably the 
language of knowledge. All that I am about 
to suggest in this connection can easily be done 
with little children and very certainly with chil- 
dren who have reached the age of six years. 
From another word list I take the verbs dico, 
speak, facio, do and video, see, which are used 
1000 times or over in the works of Csesar and 
Cicero. Think what the acquisition of those 
three words really means. Just by way of 
illustration, let us see what can be found on the 
surface of those three stems, die, fac, and vid, 
I turn to the dictionary and I pick up at a 



94, TEACHING IN THE HOME 

glance, dictate, dictation, dictator, dictatorial, 
dictature, diction, dictionary and dictum, I 
turn from my dictionary to a hand-book of 
English synonyms, and I find dictate; com- 
mand, order, enjoin, ordain, decree, prescribe, 
direct, point, urge, enforce. You can readily 
see how this business expands, and how I have 
now in hand the material for all kinds of in- 
struction about that single stem die as appHed 
to but a single word. But with these syno- 
nyms I have a great many other things at my 
command, namely, the practical historical and 
literary illustrations of the use of these various 
synonyms. And all this comes out of the stem, 
to speak. Well, I take the stem fac. Again 
just glancing along the columns of a dictionary 
I get such a collection as this; fact, faction, 
factious, factor, factored, factorship, factory, 
factotum, factual, factuality, faculative, and 
faculty. Just imagine what a mass of thought 
is here linked together for your unspinning! 
Once more I turn to my English synonyms 
and I get fact; deed, performance, act, event, 
incident, occurrence, circumstance, reality, 
truth. You can work out yourself how much 
interesting matter can be extracted from that 
list, and you will remember that I have taken 
but a single word. What I have done with 
this single word can be done with each in turn. 



LANGUAGES 95 

In this way your child, by having these distinc- 
tions pointed out, gets by leaps and bounds an 
insight into thought and the expression of 
thought which is nothing but marvelous. 

Let us now take the stem vid. Here the 
connection is not quite so clear because the 
stem most used is the supine vis. So I turn to 
vis in the dictionary and I take again at ran- 
dom; visage, visible, vision, visional, visionary, 
visit, visitor, visitant, visible, visitation, and the 
like. I take visionary to my dictionary of 
synonyms and I find visionary; imaginative, 
romantic, dreamy, fanciful, imaginary, fantas- 
tical, baseless, shadowy, unreal, ideal, chimer- 
ical. It only takes a little imagination to indi- 
cate what wonderful things can be drawn out 
of this list. But here again, I ask you to re- 
member that I have used only three words in 
this whole process. But the three Latin stems 
have even greater possibilities than those here 
indicated because I have said not a word about 
compounds as yet. Take such Latin stems as 
cred from credo, believe, or defend from de- 
fendo, defend, hab from habeo, have, ten from 
teneo, hold, pet from peto, seek, laud from 
laudo, praise, dubit from dubito, doubt, and 
others which can readily be suggested, and see 
to what a wealth of language they will lead, 
and it all will be language of quality, namely, 



96 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

language of good repute found in books of 
knowledge which must be known and under- 
stood if there is to be any association with 
knowledge, as it is administered by the schools. 

I need not pursue this process further be- 
cause the method has been indicated enough to 
show how the language study unfolds itself. 
It follows, of course, that you will have to 
study out some of these things yourself and it 
is not unlikely that you will find yourself get- 
ting acquainted with what is a new vocabulary 
to you, as well as the child. So far from this 
being a disadvantage, I think it a positive ad- 
vantage in some cases, because then you will be 
learning with your child and that simultaneous 
approach to the subject is the most powerful 
stimulant of interest which a child can receive. 
Its analogy may be seen when any child is per- 
mitted to go into the father's workshop and 
see him doing things. Here you are doing 
things together and your own interest is the 
pledge to the child that there is something in- 
teresting presently to come forth. 

What I have already said about synonyms 
will indicate the immense importance of this 
use of words for language study. Generally 
speaking, the various synonyms of a given 
word merely represent the various depart- 
ments of language in which they are used, that 



LANGUAGES 97 

is, in science, in the arts, in literature, in com- 
mon speech and the like. They also generally 
are divided into words of Saxon origin and 
those of classical origin. By this means you 
can very readily give yourself any amount of 
material for the particular language you are 
studying, but more especially for Latin, be- 
cause, as stated, Latin is the language in which 
education developed for so many centuries 
that it is the base of the scholastic vocabulary 
which it is your business to teach the child at 
the earliest moment. 

It will be found very helpful and instructive, 
and as a practical exercise, very fertilizing, to 
take a given word and use its synonyms as in- 
dicating the general usage. Thus I have be- 
fore me the word empty; and as synonyms I 
have voidj vacant, unoccupied; then, unfur- 
nished, unsupplied; then again, destitute, hare; 
and again, hollow, unsubstantial, unreal, vain. 
Waste, desolate; then again, senseless and silly. 
It will be interesting to notice this grouping 
and find out the reason for it and other sim- 
ilar grouping of synonyms. By this means 
you will find the leading ideas which have led 
to the grouping and discover once more how 
meanings divide and usage develops. 

All this you will do yourself and by usage 
and illustration show the child how the same 



98 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

meaning changes in its eccpression when ap- 
plied to different things and so steadily lead 
upward from material to spiritual things and 
finally to pure ideas as such. You need have 
no fear as to the possibility of all this, for I 
have done it repeatedly. And you will find a 
perfectly astonishing response, and not a little 
amusement, in the attempts to apply the differ- 
ing shades of meaning to various objects in the 
attempt to match the thing with the idea. 
But by this process you are building up the 
reasoning power and training linguistic ob- 
servation. 

Here again I must return to the Bible as 
your best tool for language training. For a 
very small sum you can get copies of the New 
Testament in German, French, Italian, or, in 
fact, any other language. In the use of the 
Bible you have an immense advantage because 
there are large portions of it which most 
people know, like the Lord's Prayer, the 
Twenty-third Psalm, Thirteenth Chapter of 
First Corinthians and the like. These you 
will, of course, have had the children memorize 
in English, as also many other passages like 
the Beatitudes and the Decalogue. The child 
knowing these and their meaning will find it 
an interesting exercise to learn them in various 
languages. By the time the child reads, the 



LANGUAGES 99 

resemblances and differences linguistically will 
be made available for the eye as well as for the 
ear. You can thus use at the same time all the 
knowledge thus acquired in English by bring- 
ing it into the field of the study of another 
language. Take familiar stories like that of 
David and Goliath, the Prodigal Son, and 
other parables and stories of Old Testament 
worthies, and having read them in English re- 
peatedly, which you will do as a matter of 
English training, read them also in the partic- 
ular language which you wish to emphasize. 
You may do this by letting the little learner 
follow your reading in the foreign tongue, 
having the English version before him. By 
and by you will reverse this process, all the 
while noting how readily similar words are rec- 
ognized and using your opportunities for mak- 
ing verbal changes clear, and explaining the 
manner in which words change their form, 
through racial habits of speech and other influ- 
ences. 

Your use of the Bible in this manner will 
have many indirect results which are not con- 
templated in the language study itself^ but it 
will all react upon this very powerfully. The 
practical effect, too, of the use of the Bible is 
very great because when you are dealing with 
the subject of Ethics you will have your 



100 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

material made for you again, and in this way 
the same ideas keep recurring and giving fre- 
quent chances for correction, for expansion, 
and for comparison. The Bible is the univer- 
sal text-book. 

All this will be made more effective by the 
memorizing of certain passages, either of the 
Bible or of the other works read, not merely to 
get the vocabulary, but also to train the eye and 
the ear to the usage and the 'position of the 
various words in the language which you are 
studying. This can never be taught. But it 
can be mastered by usage and usage alone per- 
fects it and creates the feeling for it. Now 
the memorizing of passages entire, whether 
Bible verses, passages from Shakspeare, from 
German or French poems and stories, creates 
the sense of relation of words in the expression 
of ideas. Idioms and common conversational 
phrases help in this matter, but in any case in 
addition to the memorizing of words get the 
memory trained in the committing of entire 
passages. How easy this is in English we all 
know by the passages from the Bible or Prayer 
Book which we repeat at church, or the orders 
of service in other formal assemblies. We 
soon do them mechanically and often even 
without thought. But this may be done with 
classical passages also. The amount of neces- 



LANGUAGES 101 

sary knowledge for such a performance, of the 
grammar of a language, is very slight. The 
more the better of course. But it is a fact that 
not a few teachers of Latin insist that the right 
teacher can get to sight reading in Latin in six 
weeks. 

What I have in mind is indicated in a very 
interesting introduction to a little book by Pro- 
fessor Post on Latin at Sight/ in which he 
says: "The Roman boy grasped the thought 
not by reasoning as to the relation of the 
clauses, but naturally, that is without con- 
scious reasoning and in the order of the Latin 
words and clauses. We may presume that he 
did this, as we ordinarily do in English, at first 
sight or first hearing. For us to learn to do 
this is harder than for the Roman — just as it is 
apt to be hard for one to do it in any language 
not his mother tongue — because we do not and 
cannot acquire the necessary elementary Latin 
in the same natural way in which the Roman 
boy acquired his, for the reason that no one now 
begins to study Latin until he has passed the 
age in which a child acquires a speaking knowl- 
edge of his vernacular/' 

Now here you have the key to what you are 
to do. He says that a child to-day usually 
studies Latin at a period when the acquisitive 

1 Page 13. 



102 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

faculties have passed beyond the time at which 
the Roman boy sets himself to learn his mother 
tongue. That is true and that is the reason 
why the road is made so needlessly hard. 
Latin should be studied early, very early. 
And if you begin in the way I have indicated 
at six, your boy will read Latin easily and with 
pleasure at the time most children begin it. 
It is true that we do not acquire the elementary 
Latin early enough, but while we cannot do it 
as well as the Koman boy did it, it is not true 
that we cannot do a great deal more than we 
do and I have shown you the way. Moreover 
I have proved that it can be done. 

But the main contention here is sound: that 
you must come to it naturally, and that natural 
approach comes by taking the language 
Imown, that is English, and seeing and using 
the equivalent in the language you wish to 
study. A Latin New Testament will help in 
this, also, though, of course, it is very different 
from classical Latin. But for the purposes 
I have in mind it will naturalize the tongue and 
great strides can be made which will make sub- 
sequent progress much more rapid and much 
more satisfactory. By usage alone you ac- 
quire the sense of the relation of words in 
speech or in writing. When you smile at a 
foreigner's use of English, even though his 



LANGUAGES 103] 

every word is correct, you feel simply that 
he has not had the practice in usage which 
teaches the right order and relation of the 
words which he knows perfectly. Therefore 
have the child memorize passages about all 
sorts of things, passages from Csesar, passages 
from Virgil, passages from Cicero, all of which 
you will first have carefully caused to he mem- 
orized and understood in English, With little 
children this process works wonders in the later 
study of the language. Sometimes you can 
set easy poetry to simple tunes and sing them, 
which makes a pleasant variation, but the 
special thing to keep in mind is to memorize 
passages because these present ideas and rela- 
tions of words together. 

Let me at this point once more guard you 
against letting this matter become so formal 
that it takes on the aspect of a dry duty or a 
task. Do not stay long on anything in which 
there is no interest. Judge of the effective- 
ness of your work by the interest you excite. 
For this reason, while you will look at the text- 
books again and again to refresh and en- 
lighten yourself, you will put the subject 
matter of these books before your child 
through the medium of your own under- 
standing rather than merely repeating what 
the book says. You will remember what 



104 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

I have said about keeping within the vocabu- 
lary which you must acquire, as indeed there 
is nothing else to do under some conditions. 
In our kindergartens, for example, the little 
children talk about cubes, cylinders, and the 
like perfectly scientific terms, because nobody 
has been able to corrupt them into something 
which is not scientific. That principle you will 
never overlook. But at the same time you will 
not become merely a talking text-booh. You 
will know the thing yourself and through the 
medium of your own understanding you will 
teach. 

For this reason you will employ the mo- 
ments not formally given to study if indeed 
there is in this entire method such a thing as 
what is commonly understood by "formal" 
study, though it is not less real on that account, 
in recapitulation and experimentation. For 
years, by way of illustration, I went weekly 
into a certain section of an American city 
where there were no English signs and kept 
my visual and other acquaintance with all 
kinds of languages by studying out the signs. 
Modernized and corrupted as the languages 
often were, they nevertheless served the pur- 
pose very well. You may do this while walk- 
ing with children in reading signs in a foreign 
tongue, or analyzing names of foreign origin, 



LANGUAGES 105 

in the naming of common objects, in the recall- 
ing of a favorite passage suggested by some- 
thing you see. These unofficial studies are not 
the least important of all. Every house on the 
street where I live stands to me for an histor- 
ical event because I associate the numbers with 
a date that has historical significance. 

For this practise we have also a most excel- 
lent authority not only in the life of Karl 
Witte but hardly less in that of John Stuart 
Mill. In the Autobiography of the latter he 
says: "My father's health required consider- 
able and constant exercise, and he walked ha- 
bitually before breakfast, generally in the green 
lanes toward Hornsey. In these walks I al- 
ways accompanied him, and with my earliest 
recollections of green fields and wild flowers is 
mingled that of the account I gave him daily of 
what I had read the day before. To the best 
of my remembrance, this was a voluntary 
rather than a prescribed exercise. I made 
notes on slips of paper while reading, and from 
these, in morning walks, I told the story to 
him/' ^ ... "In the course of instruction 
which I have partially retraced, the point most 
superficially apparent is the great effort to 
give, during the years of childhood, an amount 
of knowledge in what are considered the higher 

^Autobiography, p. 7. 



106 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

branches of education, which is seldom ac- 
quired (if acquired at all) until the age of 
manhood. The result of the experiment shows 
the ease with which this may be done, and 
places in a strong light the wretched waste of 
so many precious years as are spent in acquir- 
ing the modicum of Latin and Greek com- 
monly taught to schoolboys ; a waste which has 
led so many educational reformers to entertain 
the ill-judged proposal of discarding these lan- 
guages altogether from general education. If 
I had been by nature extremely quick of ap- 
prehension or had possessed a very accurate 
and retentive memory, or were of a remarkably 
active and energetic character, the trial would 
not have been conclusive; but in all these 
natural gifts, I am rather below than above 
par; what I could do assuredly could be done 
by any boy or girl of average capacity and 
healthy physical constitution; and if I have ac- 
complished anything, I owe it, among other 
fortunate circumstances, to the fact that 
through my early training bestowed on me by 
my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an 
advantage of a quarter of a century over my 
contemporaries." ^ 

I have cited this passage at length, though 
the whole chapter is worth careful reading to 

^Autobiography, p. 30. 



LANGUAGES 107 

reassure all my readers of the great value of 
language, especially classical study. In 
America there has been for years so strong a 
movement against the classics that many peo- 
ple who have never thought the matter through 
begin with a prejudice against Latin and 
Greek. But nothing, to my way of thinking, 
is so enriching and so valuable not only for lit- 
erary equipment but hardly less so for careful 
and logical thought as classical training. 
With the many adjuncts to such study to-day, 
and the study begun early in life, the classics 
should be a joy to children, not a cross; and 
where Mill's father had to make his list of "vo- 
cables," that is, word-lists, these are now avail- 
able in print, of almost every language and the 
young student to-day may start a whole cen- 
tury in advance of the child John Stuart Mill 
in mere equipment. The main difference was 
in the methgd and the belief of the elder Mill 
in the training of his boy and his giving himself 
to it. In this same chapter. Mill says that his 
father believed that he was better off without 
many youthful associates, because by this 
means he was saved from vulgarisms and from 
the lowering of his own habits and standards. 
In a general way I believe this principle also 
sound, and for this reason the careful guard- 
ianship of associations is most important. But 



108 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

that is another matter. Just now I wish to im- 
press the fact that it was by language study — 
keen insight into the use of words, distinctions 
of usage, definition and area of application, 
there was developed one of the most logical 
thinkers of whom we have any record. Mr. 
Mill also thought that this was vastly better 
for him, when applied to the study of logic, 
than the study of mathematics because "in 
mathematical processes few of the real difficul- 
ties of correct ratiocination occur." This ac- 
cords perfectly with President Ehot's opinion 
and should cause all parents to place special 
and peculiar emphasis on language, words and 
their uses, clearness in expression, and this will 
be best done by the collateral use of one or 
more languages. Where the language is so 
composite as English this is not only desirable ; 
it is absolutely necessary. 

The spirit, in which all that has been indi- 
cated in this chapter is to be done may well be 
illustrated by liberal quotations from another 
lover of literature, and an especial lover of 
Greek. What he says about Greek, in the es- 
say from which I quote, may with suitable vari- 
ations be applied to any language. It is An- 
drew Lang's Homer and the Study of 
Greek, He says: "Philology might be made 
fascinating; the history of a word, and the 



LANGUAGES 109 

process by which its different forms, in differ- 
ent senses, were developed might be made as 
interesting as any other story of events. But 
grammar is not taught thus: boys are intro- 
duced to a jargon about matters meaningless 
and they are naturally as much enchanted as 
if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans 
in vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere 
buzz in a chaos of nonsense. They have to 
learn to buzz by rote; and a pleasant process 
that is — a seductive initiation into the myster- 
ies. . . . Our grammar was not so philologi- 
cal, abstruse and arid as the instruments of tor- 
ture employed at present. . . . We fortu- 
nately had a teacher who was not wildly enthu- 
siastic about grammar. He would set us long 
pieces of the Ihad or Odyssey to learn, and, 
when the day's task was done, would make us 
read on adventuring ourselves in "the unseen" 
and construing as gallantly as we might with- 
out granmiar or dictionary. On the following 
day we surveyed more carefully the ground 
we had skirmished over, and then advanced 
again. . . . The result was not the making of 
many accurate scholars, though a few were 
made; others got nothing better than enjoy- 
ment in their work, and the firm belief, op- 
posed to that of most schoolboys, that the an- 
cients did not write nonsense." . . . 



110 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

"Judging from this example, I venture very 
humbly to think that any one, who, even at the 
age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, should be- 
gin where Greek literature, where all profane 
literature begins — with Homer himself. It 
was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that 
the great scholars of the Renaissance began. 
It was thus that Ascham and Rabelais began, 
by jumping into Greek and splashing about 
till they learned to swim. First, of course, a 
person must learn the Greek characters. 
Then his or her tutor may make him read a 
dozen lines of Homer, marking the cadence, the 
surge and thunder of the hexameters — a music 
which, like that of the Sirens, few can hear 
without being lured into the seas and isles of 
song. Then the tutor might translate a pas- 
sage of moving interest, like Priam's appeal 
to Achilles; first of course explaining the sit- 
uation. Then the teacher might go over some 
lines, minutely pointing out how the Greek 
words are etymologically connected with many 
words in English. Next he might take a sub- 
stantive and a verb, showing roughly how their 
inflections arose and were developed, and how 
they retain forms in Homer which do not oc- 
cur in later Greek. There is no reason why 
even this part of the lesson should be uninter- 
esting. By this time the pupil would know, 



LANGUAGES 111 

more or less, where he was, what Greek is, and 
what the Homeric poems are like. He might 
thus believe from the first that there are good 
reasons for knowing Greek, that it is the key 
to many worlds of life, of action, of beauty, of 
contemplation, of knowledge." ^ 

You may not, of course, do all this with little 
children, and every language has not a Ho- 
mer; but every language has its great lit- 
erary figures and masterpieces, and you may 
do as much or as little as you are capable of 
doing or make yourself capable of doing. But 
in the spirit portrayed here, and with the en- 
thusiasm which should be yours as the custo- 
dian of your child's intellectual future, who 
can say what you may not do? 

1" Essays in Little," pp. 80-83. 



CHAPTER V 

GEOGRAPHY 

Geography is one of the studies that should 
be among the first entered upon in the instruc- 
tion of Uttle children. The reason for this is, 
that geography offers so many opportunities 
for utilizing all the child's powers effectively at 
the same time. Through the use of maps, it 
uses and trains the eyes, through the use of 
blocks or dissected maps it trains the hands 
and the memory, and through its natural join- 
ing with history, manners, travels, pictures, 
and literature, there is almost no subject that 
cannot be touched upon in the teaching of this 
science. Handled with even a moderate de- 
gree of skill, it may make the whole course of 
geography as taught in the grades needless. 
The materials necessary, too, are so simple and 
so easily obtainable that it is not strange that 
the globe was found in every library, and is 
found now in almost every modern home. It 
lends itself readily to the teaching of the ele- 
ments of geometry and geology also, and these 
will be discussed a little later on. It is the all- 

112 



GEOGRAPHY 113 

inclusive study, because it is a study of the 
earth's surface in the first instance, and by nat- 
ural association the study of everything on the 
earth's surface. That includes pretty much 
everything. 

But there is a reason for the early use of 
geography, which is much more far reaching 
even than the inclusive character of the subject. 
And this is, that it is the best science for illus- 
trating and embodying what Herbart calls the 
four moments of instruction, namely, the mo- 
ment to show, the moment to associate, the mo- 
ment to teach, the moment to philosophize. 
These constitute, according to this educator, 
the four steps in instruction, and geography 
lends itself most readily to them, and makes 
it easy to learn the manner and method of suc- 
cessful teaching. There is almost nothing 
that you cannot teach under this heading. 
You may take, for example, your own sur- 
roundings, your own city, county, state, or 
country, and beginning with this you can roam 
over the whole of creation, coming back home 
whenever it is convenient to do so. You can 
bring to your aid the numberless works of 
travel, of all kinds ; those which have pictorial, 
those which have historical, and those which 
have biographical interest. You can deal 
with the manners, habits, customs, religion, or 



114. TEACHING IN THE HOME 

what not, of any nation or race under the heav- 
ens. You can deal with the fauna, the flora, 
of any region, and what, with plants and ani- 
mals of the innumerable varieties, you can 
make any region in the world alive and full of 
interest. On the other hand, you can deal 
with its physical features, its mountains, its 
valleys, its earthquakes, its glaciers, its forests, 
its gold mines, its diamond mines, and fill the 
mind with an endless procession of wonderful 
things, and all the while you can point at the 
precise spot where all this happens! 

Then again, through this gate you can come 
to governments, laws, and all manner of racial 
and national questions. Indeed, there is no 
limit. Through photographs, very cheap and 
easily obtainable, you can make any country 
you wish so vivid that the child will never for- 
get it, and what it stands for, and you can 
choose what it shall stand for, in the child's 
mind. If you want to go into the economic 
side of geography, you can teach what it pro- 
duces, and what it does with it, to whom it sells, 
from whom it buys, and so on almost without 
end. I merely suggest these things out of the 
thousands of things that suggest themselves, 
as showing what can be done with geography 
if you go about it with any sense of what it 
contains. Think of all there is to tell about. 



GEOGRAPHY 115 

in the ordinary adult's mind, from the NortK 
Pole to Patagonia! Think of the fascinations 
of the Arctic Zone. Think of those of the Tor- 
rid Zone! And think of all that lies between! 
Just turn to Prescott's History of Peru or 
Mexico, and see if you can find anything more 
interesting in this wide world to tell children 
than the stories of the Incas, or the Montezu- 
mas and their destruction by Pizarro and Cor- 
tez! Selected portions from these two works 
will make Peru and Mexico forever interest- 
ing to the child that hears them. But you can 
do the same thing with almost any other por- 
tion of the earth's surface. Geography should 
he the child's wonderland. 

But contemporary geography is hardly less 
interesting. Think what an education the 
whole world is getting at this very moment, 
in the geography of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 
through the thrilling events of the great war! 
Here is a struggle that is exciting world inter- 
est, and every morning brings fresh news 
and fresh happenings from every quarter 
of the globe. Now it is a battle of Chili, 
then one off the Falkland Islands, then it 
is a battle in Persia or Turkey or South 
Africa, to say nothing of the thrilling events 
in Belgium, France and Poland. What 
possible material could be better than to 



116 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

take these ordinary every-day events, and 
fix them in the mind of the child now, events 
that in ten or twenty years will be history! 
But it is not alone the interest of the land and 
the people, but the opportunity for learning 
what is going on in the world, and how the 
world behaves, and what motives are govern- 
ing it, and whether these motives are good ones 
or bad ones. Probably more people are get- 
ting instruction in geography, of which they 
have never known anything before, than at 
any time in the previous history of the world. 
But they are getting all the by-products 
of that geographical knowledge. They are 
learning about buildings, ancient and mediae- 
val art, through cathedrals and public architec- 
ture and old world structures, of which they 
previously knew nothing. Then again, they 
are learning about habits and national charac- 
teristics of. the great powers of the world as 
they never knew them in their lives before. 
And they are learning it concretely, through 
the maps that almost every metropolitan daily 
prints. Think of the material accessible in 
this fashion that only a few years ago was not 
even obtainable except at a great cost! But 
this can be done also with ancient lands and 
peoples. There is something going on all the 
time in some part of this old earth, which is 



GEOGRAPHY 117 

full of human interest. Geography is the 
basal science through which all these things are 
understood, because it localizes them. You 
can point to the spot and say, "There is the 
place," and that goes a great way toward in- 
tegrating it permanently in the mind. The 
mere color scheme of maps, in this way, is a 
kind of education. 

Notice again, the personalities that are en- 
gaged in this great struggle. Here are the 
men whose names will live in the history of the 
world, and will be talked about when the child 
of to-day is a man, even an old man. Just as 
the mature people of to-day are talking about 
Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Sumner, 
Garrison, John Brown, and the host of the fig- 
ures of our Ci\dl War period, so twenty or 
thirty years hence they will be talking about 
Kaiser Wilhelm II, Gen. Joffre, Gen. Von 
Hindenburg, Mr. Asquith, WinstoA Churchill, 
the Grand Duke Nicholas, and a multitude of 
others. All this will come in naturally in dis- 
cussing the mere geography of the war and 
its stirring events. And if with all this, we 
include the innumerable writings of the Ger- 
man professors, the English professors, and 
the American professors, who have spoken or 
written about the war, what a vista is opened! 
It is not to be supposed the child can take in 



118 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

the full significance of all this, of course. But 
it can learn the names and master some of the 
connections, and that is a great deal. 

But what seems to me even more important, 
think of the public documents that are being 
made accessible, just for the labor of picking 
them up. The official documents like the 
White papers, the Yellow papers, and the offi- 
cial statements of the various governments, 
there you have the raw material, from the 
study of which many an historian of the future 
will write the text-books which these very 
babies of to-day will have to study. Think of 
the interest and pleasure they will have when 
they come to some citation, and remember to 
have heard it read or discussed or even talked 
about in childhood ! There is literally no limit 
to this matter, when one once gets a real con- 
ception of how these things are interlinked with 
each other. In this manner, the Busso-Turk- 
ish War of 1876 was impressed upon my own 
mind. So I fixed the South African or Boer 
War into the minds of my own children. So 
the wise parent of to-day, the teaching father 
or mother, will utilize the world's activities to 
fertilize, enrich, and occupy with real knowl- 
edge the child mind. The mere recital of these 
things makes the blood tingle and excites the 
imagination. 



GEOGRAPHY 119 



The visible symbol of geography is a map 
or a globe, or both. Under such a review of the 
subject as I have described, it signifies world 
Hfe. * 'Everywhere there is Hfe, hfe full and 
free, everywhere delight in beholding the mul- 
titude of scenes which are unfolding them- 
selves before the child." Get a large map of 
the world, and hang it where it meets the eye 
most frequently. Ours hung in the dining 
room, and was made most use of at meal times, 
chiefly because that was the time we were all 
together, and the meal hour was usually the 
instruction hour. But hang it, in any case, 
where it is easily accessible and where the 
forms of the continents and the various lands 
are easily and readily seen, and where the child 
will be soon accustomed to think of the size and 
shape of the various portions of the earth's sur- 
face. Always use a map, and whatever the 
subject you happen to be discussing, use the 
map, because it objectifies what you are talk- 
ing about, and makes the question and answer 
method easy and simple. It also stimulates 
the imagination and provokes reflection upon 
the things seen and handled, as it were, in this 
way. Map instruction is always concrete. 
In presenting the physical aspects of geog- 



120 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

raphy, for instance, land and water are always 
before the child. Soon mountains and valleys 
are taken for granted. Soon also rivers and 
river basins are differentiated. Take the fa- 
miliar ones of our own country and familiar- 
ize the child with them, through stories about 
them and their discovery. Thus about the 
Mississippi, tell the stories of the early explor- 
ers. Here is a rich field for literary lore 
and interesting facts. Most early discovery 
followed the rivers, because it was the easiest 
form of travel. As you come to particular 
points, pause, and tell about them, and then 
have the child try to do the same thing. It 
will be found rare sport for him and for you! 
Or start at any well-known point and make all 
sorts of excursions from it. But get the 
greater things first, and then gradually take 
in the more specific and lesser points and di- 
visions. Trace the mountain system around 
the whole earth. Pause long enough at va- 
rious stations at things of interest, and make 
the journey a sort of pictorial tour. Plenty 
of material for this purpose is easily to be had. 
After the great divisions have been clearly 
outlined, take particular countries, and get 
your material about them together, and take 
them in detail. Your only trouble will be 
that you won't be able to deal with all that you 



GEOGRAPHY 121 

have to give, because you will be led along into 
all sorts of side inquiries about them, and their 
people, and their natural history and phenom- 
ena. This is really philosophizing about these 
lands and should be encouraged. When you 
can, use some extract from literature in con- 
nection with it, as when in Spain, and talking 
about the Alhambra, have a picture of it, and 
read some selection from Washington Irving's 
volume on that wonderful palace. So with 
other places and countries. But always be 
pictorial, concrete, fastening on something 
particular and interesting. "Interest," says 
Compayre, "is the liking one may conceive for 
a thing, and that causes one to take pleasure 
in it. To interest is to arouse the hunger of 
the intellect. Let us mark well that its aim is 
not to amuse or divert and make teaching into 
play. . . . Interest, as Herbart understood 
it, is at once the characteristic of things which 
captivates the attention, and a feeling of cu- 
riosity, of alertness and activity of intellect 
manifested in the mind. ... It is interest 
which is the spring of mental activity, the prin- 
ciple of the intellectual hfe." ^ 

Take time enough to arouse this kind of in- 
terest. Do not let it get to be mere diversion 
or amusement, though it may have this ele- 

iCompayrg, Herbart, p. 48. 



Ut TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ment, too. But keep to the facts, and keep 
to the principle that you are dealing with 
knowledge, and that it is not less knowledge, 
because it is highly colored and interest- 
ing knowledge. Whenever it is possible to 
link such information to something that 
relates to childhood, do that, as the com- 
parison of the child's own life with the life of 
childhood in some other time or country or 
historical epoch. The social life of various 
countries may thus be made the subject of in- 
numerable interesting lessons and informing 
talks. But don't do it all yourself. Let the 
child do as much of it as you can get him to do. 
If you can bring to this kind of teaching ob- 
jects of one kind and another illustrative of 
the thing you are teaching, so much the 
better. Blank maps are easily obtainable, 
whereby children can be given the specific 
hand-work of coloring maps after the pattern 
of the large map before them. That often 
gives relief and supplies "rest work" from 
thinking too consecutively. In fact, in this 
matter children can do what most freshman do 
in college in history courses, in fixing histori- 
cal geography. Sometimes it may be inter- 
esting to take a single country, like France, 
and show how often it has changed shape un- 
der different rulers. All this will visualize all 



GEOGRAPHY J«3 

the time, the land and its meaning, and its his- 
tory, but the thing for this period you must 
keep in mind is the geographical interest. 
Indeed, in all the various studies the period 
for any one study is simply the temporary 
emphasis upon that portion of it, rather than 
upon some other, instead of being an entirely 
different subject. Thus the knowledge be- 
comes coordinated knowledge, and all things 
are seen to be linked with one another. 

Trace out from time to time, the great voy- 
ages of the discoverers, like Columbus, Ves- 
pucci, Magellan, and others. Take trips 
from one point on the globe to another, and 
take in the interesting things on the way. 
After reasonable familiarity with this on the 
plane map, do it with the globe, and open up 
the subject of the sphericity of the earth. 
More about this when we come to the study of 
geometry and other applied mathematics. 
But already you can point out what the spher- 
icity of the earth does, as to distances, and 
trade routes, and the like. You can show 
what canals have done, the Suez and the Pan- 
ama and the Kiel Canal, and others. This 
opens up a fresh and vast chapter of material, 
which will at once occur to every mature 
mother or father. But don't come to any- 
thing suddenly and without context. Liead 



124 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

from one thing to another, the simple things 
first, those biggest and most easy of under- 
standing and differentiation, and the more 
complex later on. You are not giving a mass 
of fragments unrelated to each other. You 
are teaching, in a connected way, the science of 
geography. Never let that fact get away 
from you. This is a fundamental principle. 

II 

Names should figure largely in your teach- 
ing of geography. Have you ever thought 
that the whole world's life, and much of its his- 
tory, politics, and civilization, has turned on 
names? I hope I need not tell you what you 
can do when you come to the great names of 
the world capitals, like Rome, Athens, Paris, 
Vienna, Berlin, London, St. Petersburg, or 
Petrograd, as we shall hereafter have to say, 
and others. Here your work is cut out for 
you, because there is so much of history, art, 
science and the rest suggested merely by the 
simple name. Just to tell the story of these 
cities with pictures, photographs, and the like, 
is to open a whole new world to any child. 
But just now you are teaching their geograph- 
ical location and position in the world. Show 
their relation to the sea and the great roads of 
travel. Work out for yourself why they are 



GEOGRAPHY 125 

where they are, rather than somewhere else. 
But it is hardly less interesting to take them 
up from the linguistic point of view. Person- 
ally we have found linguistic geography the 
most interesting of all. Take, for example, 
a name like Lincoln, which is really Lin- 
coloniaj and in England marks the site of 
a Roman colony. Take the names that end 
in burg, which really means a fortified place, 
and work out why. Look up in any encyclo- 
paedia the history of names, and you will find a 
mine of information both for yourself and the 
child. In a country like ours, the history of 
Indian names is full of interest. Or, point out 
that all cities that end in ville the termination 
comes from the French, which means city or 
town. Or those which end in j^olis, which is the 
Greek word for city, like Indiana-^oZi^ or Min- 
nea-polis. Or, if you want to dip into ecclesi- 
astical history, take the names of cities that are 
named after saints, like St. Louis, St. Paul, 
St. Joseph, or St. (San) Francisco. Trace 
out the history of the names in your own vicin- 
ity, and find out by way of illustration that 
Danvers, Mass., is really D'Anvers, the 
French form of Antwerp. This is the way 
President White first interested the students 
of Michigan University in the study of history 
with some most astonishing, and often amus- 



1«6 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ing, results. Almost any locality, in this way, 
can be made the beginning of very interesting 
and fruitful investigations. 

This is especially true when you are deal- 
ing with Old World names, almost all of 
which, especially the Asiatic, have some spe- 
cial significance. Find out why you sing in 
your hymn book about "Araby the Blest." 
Compare the Straits of Bab-el Mandeb with 
Bab-el, Take some of the commoner names, 
and trace them to their origin, and you will have 
amusement and instruction made to order for 
you. Almost any gazetteer of names or ency- 
clopaedia will give you these facts in great abun- 
dance. Everything is raw material for your 
own assimilation, and then for the fertilization 
of your child's mind. The older the names 
are, the more interesting they are, because in 
the youth of the race this was the simplest way 
of fixing anything in the mind and conscious- 
ness of the people most interested. Thus you 
can infer that Heliopolis was the site of a great 
temple of the sun, when you remember that 
helios is the Greek word for sun and polis 
means city. Still in Egypt, link Alexandria 
with its founder and you open the whole sub- 
ject of Alexander, his conquests and Hfe, and 
make it concrete with the existing city of to- 
day. Many names in themselves tell a story 



GEOGRAPHY 127 

of absorbing interest. Where the name is 
linked with a personality, make the linkage 
clear, and use it again when you come to study 
history. But just now you are teaching geog- 
raphy; keep that in mind and keep the physi- 
cal relation in the foreground of your teaching 
and talk. 

You will find the Bible specially rich in this 
sort of thing, because almost every Bible name 
has some significance, which is supposed to be 
derived from the circumstances surrounding 
its foundation. Thus Kiriath Sepher indi- 
cates that it was the seat of a library which is 
now lost, because it means Book City, Let 
nothing of this sort get by you, as you go 
along. As you travel over the continents, no- 
tice these things and jot them down for your 
own investigation, and you will be surprised 
how much use you will make of them. The 
whole history of the ancient religions can be 
reconstructed, almost, from the surviving 
names of the deities, and a good deal of the 
same sort of thing can be done for nations 
through the names of their principal places. 

Geographical teaching should always be 
vivid, picturesque, and eocact. You can make 
as much of a "story" of it as you please, pro- 
vided you are always exact about it. This 
is of very great importance, because unless 



12g TEACHING IN THE HOME 

you are exact, you will mix things up in the 
young mind and simply get a great mass of 
blurred impressions. Don't leap too far at a 
single jump. Tell things slowly, and see to 
it that the things are connected distinctly with 
the time, place and circumstances of the geo- 
graphical knowledge which you wish to teach. 
Always remember that in the infant mind 
there are many latent forces to be awakened, 
and it is important, so to speak, that if you are 
to start an electric current that you touch the 
right button. In fact, that is the way to think 
about the child mind. You are not shovelling 
fuel into the mind, you are leading the child's 
own native mental energy to exert itself in a 
given direction. You are the efficiency engi- 
neer to see to it that nothing is wasted and 
that its power is not diverted to useless ends. 
Don't let the young mind get sidetracked 
in mere minutige, however interesting. Tim- 
buctoo is interesting but not important. 
Rome is both interesting and important! If 
you happen to live in Carlinville, Illinois, it is 
worth while to begin at Carlinville, but don't 
stay there, because the vast mass of humanity 
never heard of it, and would not be interested 
in it if they did. Stay with a child by the 
things which are big enough and full enough 
of content to make it worth while to dwell 



GEOGRAPHY, 129 

upon often, and which yield something fresh 
and new every time you talk about them. 
This does not mean that you are to slight local 
matters, quite the contrary. It is really to 
give them their true significance and liberate 
the mind from subjugation to locality and in- 
tellectual provincialism. A child can be made 
cosmopolitan in thought much more easily 
than an adult. It has no prejudices already 
formed, it has no interests to subserve, it has 
no violent dislikes to overcome. Therefore 
seek to make it cosmopolitan in thought by ac- 
quainting it with the varieties of thought 
which there are in the world, through the vari- 
ous peoples who inhabit it. 

Ill 

Natural phenomena, plants, animals, and 
striking configurations should occupy an im- 
portant place in the teaching of geography. It 
is not merely that there shall be information 
about the plants and animals themselves, but 
these become gradually the indices of the lati- 
tudes from which they come. A lion, for ex- 
ample, should suggest an African jungle to a 
child, not an Arctic ice floe! Here you bring 
in the principle of association which helps very 
much for geography, especially as to fauna 
and flora. There are tropical fruits and flow- 



130 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ers, sub-tropical fruits and flowers, and fruit 
common to temperate zones. If these are as- 
sociated in the mind of the child with the kind 
of climate and kind of temperature of the re- 
spective countries where they are indigenous, 
there is a good deal gained in the way of geo- 
graphical association. Thus the reading of 
Kipling will always associate elephants with 
India, though they are not confined to India. 
But that will open the way to the commercial 
question of ivory and others of a similar na- 
ture. Lion hunting will visualize the jungle 
in Africa, as tiger hunting will visualize it in 
the imagination with India. These and such 
like associations are of very great interest for 
themselves and for the study of geography. 
Common objects in daily use can be made use- 
ful for study, in this way, by tracing out the 
country of origin, and where objects are 
stamped with the country of origin as is now 
required by many countries, including our 
own, there is a new field of interest opened. 
Flowers lend themselves particularly to this 
kind of study, and have the added use that 
presently this same information will be used in 
elementary studies in botany and science gen- 
erally. Whenever plants are mentioned in 
reading, or foliage, or vegetation of any kind, 
it is well to raise the question of where such a 



GEOGRAPHY 131 

country naturally would be. Thus you intro- 
duce naturally the question of climate, fer- 
tility, soil, and other matters. Geography 
thus becomes the agent of teaching, as it 
should, and as every study should, something 
beside itself. If an effort is made at differen- 
tiating species, this is so much additional gain. 
But it will readily be seen how things hang to- 
gether if these things are associated together, 
and every fresh association of this kind makes 
a new peg for the memory to hang upon. If 
the geography is not remembered by one thing, 
it is remembered by another, and this is the 
soundest way of memorizing anything, because 
it comes through association with some kind 
of permanent knowledge, Eirds and their 
plumage form another attractive field for this 
kind of geographical study. Just think what 
an instructive thing a visit to even a very ordi- 
nary zoological garden will do in this connec- 
tion, and what added pleasure the visit will 
give if there is brought to it some, even slight, 
knowledge of what it is expected will be seen. 
The whole range of the animal world is thus 
placed at the teacher's disposal for furthering 
a knowledge of the earth and its structure. 
The same is true if particular mountain peaks 
or volcanoes are selected and made the subject 
of study and exposition. No child that has 



132 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ever had the story of the eruptions of Vesuvius 
or Mt. Pelee brought to its attention, espe- 
cially v^ith photographs, will ever forget the 
place and the conditions and the effects of such 
eruptions. 

But here again warning must be given that 
you are not to plunge into these things without 
'preparation for them. Before you talk about 
volcanoes, tell something about the earth and 
its crust and its interior. Explain how much 
knowledge we have about such things, and 
then show how volcanoes, from causes not 
known, though they have been extinct for 
years, suddenly become active. If you tell the 
story of Herculaneum and Pompeii in this con- 
nection, and read an appropriate passage 
from, let us say, Bulwer's Last Days of 
Pompeiij you will not only make an impres- 
sion which will create permanent interest, but 
you will arouse a desire to investigate the 
whole subject, which will lead you around the 
whole globe. You may find that you have to 
look up and learn more about volcanoes than 
you ever knew in your own Hfe before! 
Which is just as it ought to be! But come to 
it gradually and by easy steps, first things 
known, and then things new. 

The first question concerning any new plant 
or flower or animal should be "Where is the 



GEOGRAPHY 133 

home of this thing," and sometimes to work 
backward to it, from the nature of the animal 
itself, is very interesting. Heavy fur usually 
means one thing, light fur another. Some 
kinds of teeth mean one thing, others another. 
The habitat of animals generally shows what 
they must subsist on, and this in turn is shown 
in the tools they have to work with. This 
process can be worked out very well with do- 
mestic animals by noticing their differences, 
and thus tracing out their original homes. 
The distribution of man throughout the earth 
is similarly useful for its geographical content. 
Why are races that inhabit certain portions of 
the earth, as they are, as distinguished from 
those which we know and see daily? This im- 
mediately again, raises the question of the ef- 
fect of climate, food and nature upon man, and 
whether he makes his conditions or they make 
him! This question is readily seen to be one 
of very large implications. Consideration of 
it cannot begin too soon. 

Along with this, there may be raised simple 
questions in astronomy. We speak of the 
''North'" star and the ''Southern'' Cross, and 
the like. Why? The study of the heavens 
helps especially, as it affords the easiest ap- 
proach to the story of the movement of the 
earth and the stellar bodies. So the question 



1S4 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

of the relation of the earth to the sun and the 
planets, and the general development of the 
Copernican hypothesis is opened up. Inci- 
dentally, the moon is introduced, and the 
changes of the moon and its use as a measure 
of time, and the relation of all this to the sea- 
sons, and its significance to religious festivals, 
as Easter, and others, can be shown, and this, 
in turn, joined to the celebration of these fes- 
tivals in various countries, in their various dif- 
ferent ways. All this, it will be seen, has a 
bearing more or less direct upon the earth and 
its surface and conditions and inhabitants and 
configurations, all of which we call the science 
of geography, broadly speaking. There is lit- 
erally no limit to the amount one can do, if the 
way is open and the inclination leads on. But 
the child so taught will never find geography 
tame or unpleasing. 

IV 

But no study of geography with children 
will be complete that does not make large use 
of books of travel. It makes little difference 
where you begin, after you have a little knowl- 
edge of the map. But such books as Nan- 
sen's Farthest North, or Livingstone's Af- 
rica, or Stanley's In Darkest Africa, or 
Wright's Greenland's Ice Fields, or any one 



GEOGRAPHY 135 

of a thousand that could be mentioned, will 
be found invaluable. Any library under 
''Travel" will give you all the material you can 
possibly use. You need not use all of any one 
book, but simply select such as have the ele- 
ment of picturesqueness and vivacity of de- 
scription. Often biographies will give the 
same result, especially if they be biographies 
of explorers which add the element of striking 
personality. Travellers usually try to make 
their stories interesting, and while they may 
often lack historical accuracy, they answer for 
your purpose, namely, geography. The 
books of Parkman like the Oregon Trail, 
Conspiracy of Pontiac, Pioneers of France 
in the New World, Count Frontenac, and 
others that might be named, are full of geo- 
graphical as well as historical interest. The 
works of Prescott and Motley are in the same 
class. The advantage of using books like 
these, rather than more modern ones, is that 
they are classics of their kind, and are wonder- 
ful models of style, as well as of deep and irre- 
sistible attraction. There are innumerable 
books on England and France and New Eng- 
land, and the West, and Far West, which may 
be used. Almost any library will have all you 
can possibly use. For Japan, the works of 
William Elliott Griffis will be found unique 



126 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and full of charm. The same author has writ- 
ten interestingly, too, of Holland. Indeed, 
anything from this pen has value for literary 
form, for historical and geographical interest. 
But I need not enumerate, because your 
library is at hand and has them all. 

Here again, do not let the subject get away 
from you. You have been talking, let us say, 
about Holland, its location, and natural fea- 
tures, the dikes that keep out the sea, and its 
reclamations from the ocean, and all this should 
be recalled when you take up, say. Brave Lit- 
tle Holland, by Dr. Griffis. If you read 
from the Conquest of Meocico, recall the 
early discoverers and their story before enter- 
ing upon some passage of interest. Don't do 
things disconnectedly. Have a context for 
your story before you begin it and let it come 
in its proper place, first the blade, then the ear, 
then the full corn in the ear! Original pic- 
tures by travellers are often of the highest 
value, because they are out of the conventional 
lines of illustration. But do not lose your 
subject in too many details. See that the big 
outlines are always kept in mind, and don't 
get lost in detail. In dealing with such a book 
as Amelia Edwards's Thousand Miles Up 
the Nile, you will have many things to linger 
over. Pass rapidly over those which require 



GEOGRAPHY 137 

maturity and reflective capabilities, and deal 
with those which have visual quality, which 
suggest pictures, and which can readily be 
comprehended and retained. 

Where it is possible to consult relief maps, 
do this, because this will make things much 
more real. It will also help for some elemen- 
tary studies in geology later on. But let the 
travellers tell their stories, and let the interest 
excited be the measure of how long you hold 
on to a particular line. Never quite exhaust 
anything, so far as interest is concerned, be- 
cause this makes it possible to return to it. 
But in general, the narrative of a real man, 
having real experiences, especially if they be 
of an exciting and thrilling nature, cannot fail 
to help you in your work for the child. I 
think it wise also, in this same connection, to 
point out that you will often be in danger of 
having your own interest so aroused in a given 
subject that you will think because it interests 
you it must therefore also interest the child. 
This is not always true. I have myself had 
the experience of reading to children, getting 
violently interested myself and reading breath- 
lessly on, only to discover presently, that 
though the children were watching me cu- 
riously, I had gotten far beyond their depth. 
Read not to them but with them. Keep the 



138 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

idea uppermost that you are getting this 
knowledge with them and that their interest 
and understanding is the paramount matter. 
In general, it will be found wise to keep to 
groups in these matters. That is, when deal- 
ing with Europe, concentrate on the various 
European matters. If you are dealing with 
Asia, drop everything that is not Asiatic. 
So while you are dealing with matters Ameri- 
can, let everything bear upon America. This 
is simply to avoid confusion, but even more, 
to drink deeply enough of one thing at a time 
to prevent the matters from becoming simply 
interesting diversions. In general, keep along 
with the history you are studying, so that these 
things will reenforce each other. Then the 
transition from one to the other will be easy 
and natural, and not abrupt. You can often 
give the whole study a local and contemporary 
touch, by pointing out the various classes of 
foreign, that is, non-English-speaking people, 
in the community, and awakening the liveliest 
interest in them by discussing the country they 
came from, what they probably did there, why 
they left, and what they are doing here, and 
what changes they must find here as contrasted 
with their native lands. That will give a kind 
of respect for this class of our fellow citizens, 
which has long been wanting in American life. 



GEOGRAPHY 139 

Under this view, an Italian won't be a "Dago" 
and similar epithets will not easily be adopted 
by the little becoming citizen of the republic! 
Books of travel enlarge the mind and ex- 
pand the intellectual horizon. Next to trav- 
elling itself they are the best substitute. 
Many people who have never been able to 
leave their own firesides in the body, have, in 
the mind and imagination, roamed all over 
this broad earth, have tasted the delights of 
foreign scenes, and had touch with foreign 
peoples, and have learned how various and 
how wonderful is this thing we call humanity. 
Such persons cease with this experience to 
be narrow-minded, because they have been 
abroad. They cease to be provincial, because 
they become citizens of the world. They get 
that comparative view of things, which makes 
for tolerance and inclusiveness of spirit, which 
is the best result of travel. This is what your 
work in geography mainly should do. It is 
of very little worth to laiow the physical 
boundaries of nations, and know nothing of 
the nations thus bounded. Humanize the 
study in this way at every turn. Try to cre- 
ate sympathies with the peoples thus studied, 
with their conditions, their hardships, and their 
joys. This also has high educational as well 
as spiritual value, and helps to create the hu- 



140 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

manized being you want your child to be. 
This is the essence of true culture as well. 
Perhaps this can be indicated by a quotation 
from Goldsmith's "Traveller" as well as any- 
thing. He is speaking of Switzerland and 
the Swiss: 

My soul turn from them, turn we to survey 

Where rougher climes a nobler race display — 

Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread. 

And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. 

No product here, the barren fields afford 

But man and steel, the soldier and his sword; 

No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array. 

But Winter lingering, chills the lap of May ; 

No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast. 

But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. 

Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm 

Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. 

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small. 

He sees his little lot, the lot of all; 

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, 

To shame the meanness of his humble shed; 

No costly lord, the sumptuous banquet deal. 

To make him loathe his vegetable meal ; 

But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil 

Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. 

Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose 

Breasts the keen air and carols as he goes; 

With patient angle trolls the finny deep. 

Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep; 

Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way. 

And drags the struggling savage unto day. 



GEOGRAPHY 141 

At night, returning, every labor sped 
He sits him down the monarch of a shed; 
Smiles by his cheerful fire and round surveys 
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze; 
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard 
Displays her cleanly platter on the board, 
And haply too, some pilgrim thither led. 
With many a tale, repays the nightly bed. 

Not often does descriptive verse display the 
sweet qualities of heart and mind which are 
found in these lines, and the child to whom 
such verses are read or to whom travel through 
books and imagination bequeathes a similar 
spirit, is a favored being, because sympathetic 
with the whole wide brotherhood of mankind! 



CHAPTER VI 

HISTORY 

"The world," says Emerson in his great es- 
say on History, "exists for the education of 
each man. There is no age or state of society 
or mode of action in history to which there is 
not somewhat corresponding in his life. 
Everything tends in a wonderful manner to 
abbreviate itself, and yield its own virtue to 
him. He should see that he can live all his- 
tory in his own person. He must sit stolidly 
at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied 
by kings or empires, but know that he is 
greater than all the geography and all the gov- 
ernment of the world; he must transfer the 
point of view from which history is commonly 
read, from Rome and Athens and London, to 
himself, and not deny his conviction that he is 
the court, and if England or Egypt have any- 
thing to say to him he will try the case ; if not, 
let them forever be silent. He must attain 
and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield 
their secret sense, and poetry and annals are 
alike. The instinct of the mind, the purpose 

142 



HISTORY 143 

of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of 
the signal narrations of history. . . . This 
life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, 
Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church, 
Court, and Commerce, as with so many flowers 
and wild ornaments, grave and gay. I will 
not make account of them. I believe in Eter- 
nity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, 
and the Islands — the genius and creative prin- 
ciples of each and all eras in my own mind." 
Thus one of the most creative and inspiring 
souls that ever held a pen approached the 
study of the world and announced the leading 
principle of worthy historical study, that it 
must not be viewed objectively, but subjec- 
tively — made our own and verified not merely 
by literature, but verified by the experience 
and thought of each individual man. This is 
what should be kept constantly before the 
mind in introducing the young child to the 
study, which records the uses to which the uni- 
versal mind has been put, whether it be in the 
dress of Greek or Roman, Italian or German, 
whether embodied in a great book, a great 
cathedral or a great picture. Very beautiful, 
but very vague, you say. True enough, but 
if there is anything more vague than history, 
it would be hard to know what it is, unless it 
is that mythical thing called the Subconscious, 



IM TEACHING IN THE HOME 

which is playing the thinking of mankind such 
hilarious pranks at the present time. If you 
will take any personality, Caesar, Cromwell, 
or Goethe, and collect the opinions and inter- 
pretations which have been made of him, you 
will find yourself bewildered at the variety of 
uses which may be made of the same facts. 
The fighting generals never get through their 
arguments as to what actually occurred on any 
battlefield. The English teach that Waterloo 
was won by Wellington; the Germans teach 
that Bliicher was responsible for the downfall 
of Napoleon; and as for Napoleon himself, 
well, only recently one wTiter compiled a book 
composed entirely of Napoleon's own words, 
supposing probably that this settled things, 
not recognizing that even this involved the 
writer's choice of material, and that this selec- 
tion was only another "interpretation!" 

You will never get the soul out of history by 
merely taking a table of contents of mankind's 
actions, or a chronological table of the order 
in which they occurred. Some people think 
that is history. But history only really begins 
when we identify ourselves with what hap- 
pened and try to live through the experiences 
of the past and get them revivified in the 
dialect of our own experience. This is what 
Emerson means when he says that "we are 



HISTORY 145 

always coming up with the emphatic facts of 
history in our private experience and verifying 
them here." This is not only true, but they 
are never really verified until they are verified 
in the private experience. Viewed in this way, 
history is something fascinating, thrilling and 
absorbing. It links you with all the world, 
because it is all the world in your own terms. 
It makes you fight with the fighters, love with 
the lovers, suffer with the sufferers, and tri- 
umph with the victorious. It lifts you out of 
the limitations of your immediate surroundings 
into the area of world fife and world events. 
It makes your own mind and emotions the 
center of creation. The majestic figures that 
have made the world's life or marred it, are not 
strangers they are fellow citizens of the world. 
The natural outcome of all this is a sort of 
comradeship with men and events. There 
comes a sort of identification with the actors of 
the world drama which is like that which you 
experience at a well-acted play. When you sit 
in your darkened auditorium and cry softly 
over some story that is being enacted on the 
stage yonder, you know perfectly well that it 
is only play-acting — but you cry, not because 
of the sorrow which is sham, but the sorrow 
which is real and which in your own heart you 
know to exist somewhere, and which may be 



146 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

possible to you. In other words you identify 
yourself with the actor to the extent of feeUng 
really what very likely to him is not only 
merely acting but even hard and disagreeable 
work. Are you duped then? Far from it. 
You are having something which is vital and 
genuine to you, whatever his performance may 
be to him. The very greatest of all poets has 
told us that all the world is a stage ; well, then, 
since these actors are here and are giving you 
their parts, observe them, feel with them, un- 
derstand them, if you can, and let them live in 
you. That is the way to study history. 

But you will say to me that this is a mature 
use of the mind and not at all possible to chil- 
dren. In fact, just the reverse is true. When 
you go to the playhouse how often the best 
efforts of the actor fail to touch you, not be- 
cause the efforts are not worthy and well- 
directed, but because you are full of your ware- 
house, your clothing and tinwares, your leather 
and wool, your law cases and bankruptcies, 
your pots and kettles, your dressmaking and 
your housekeeping, and the thousand things 
which have gripped your life, and made it hard 
for you to get out of yourself. Habit has 
already made you the slave to many things, and 
the task-masters won't let go! But the child 
has no such despots. His mind is ready to play 



HISTORY 147 

with anybody, Cleopatra or Nero, Demosthe- 
nes or Hannibal, and only wants a suitable 
introduction to make these personages perma- 
nent members of his entourage. And curi- 
ously enough if you don't introduce them they 
will invent others to take their places. Your 
child is a real world citizen. 

Then again your emotions may be dulled 
and you unable to experience the great big 
human emotion as contrasted with your own 
little Humboldt Avenue delusions. You 
think in terms of what Brattle Street, or Chest- 
nut Hill, think about the matters, and feel with 
the mob instinct of your class and associates. 
But the child, with uncorrupted emotions, is 
more democratic and more cosmopolitan. He 
doesn't have to have a tag attached to things 
before he knows how he feels about them. 
They are interesting to him because they are 
human. He will, very likely, share your 
thoughts and come to new things with some of 
the cerements of your narrowness and preju- 
dice hanging to him, but, generally speaking, 
he will accept any kind of company and try to 
adjust himself to it, and it is your business to 
introduce him to all kinds and varieties. That 
is one of the uses of history which many stu- 
dents have not yet discovered. They still 
think they must add a "moral" at the end of 



148 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

each tale, just as the preacher must tell you 
exactly what every text means. Well, the 
preacher does not know what every text means, 
and you do not know what the real character of 
the famous personages of the world's life was, 
except by fragmentary and often misleading 
accounts. Therefore let them tell their own 
story, and let the child try out his mind and 
feelings together, as each one unfolds himself 
before him, through the medium of your read- 
ing or teaching. You will then see how 
uncorrupted emotion works, in the pres- 
ence of things which seem to you stale and 
unprofitable. You will possibly find your 
own emotions renewed in seeing them blos- 
som again in the soul of your child. And 
with your wisdom and supervising maturity 
you will know when to stop and change the 
course of these feelings, because you will know 
when they are becoming dangerous and un- 
wholesome. And you will turn from one to 
another, and so gently, but surely, train all the 
emotions because you will select your subjects 
with care, having that in mind. You will 
make many a dark day bright, and many a 
dreary day delightful, because you will show 
how to get at the springs of the universal life, 
which makes people superior to their immedi- 
ate environment. 



HISTORY 149 



The best way to begin the teaching of his- 
tory with Httle children is through the study of 
personalities, that is, biography. You have 
been teaching, let us say, the geography of 
France. Well, Napoleon comes first to mind, 
and that offers at once a starting point for get- 
ting a great deal of interesting historical 
material through the study of the biography of 
that amazing individual. In English history 
you have your work cut out for you, from King 
Alfred onwards. You can vary it any time 
by taking now rulers and conquerors, now 
literary men, now scientific men, now ex- 
plorers, now churchmen. There is no land 
that has not its interesting figures and as 
you deal with the geogi'aphy, teaching the 
story of the land, teach also the story of 
some leading personality, so that by the princi- 
ple of association you link the land and the 
individual. Just as the history of England 
is the history of London, or that of France 
is the history of Paris, so ahnost every epoch 
of history has some leading figure. In fact, 
it will be well to do this by the great epochs 
of history, which are often named for individ- 
uals, as the Age of Napoleon, or the Age of 
Frederick the Great, or the Age of Pericles, 



150 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and so on. Who these people were, and what 
they did, is an endless tale, to be sure, but the 
main outlines can be very readily grasped and 
made the basis for historical exposition. 
There is no better way of teaching history than 
through the biographical medium. You will 
find, for one thing, that such characters are 
very speedily embodied into the play of chil- 
dren, and you are thus forming also the play- 
stuff of the child's mind and this of a quality 
which yields knowledge. Be somewhat careful 
to select the great outstanding figures first, 
though it makes little difference where you 
start. It is an advantage of course to be con- 
secutive. The Greek, Roman and Semitic 
mythologies form the best point of departure, 
because mythology represents, itself, the child- 
hood of the race and accords naturally with 
the psychological instincts and habits of child 
thought. Keep it as a principle that the 
nearer you get to the beginnings of race his- 
tory and development the surer you are that 
you are dealing with the materials of child 
thought. 

For this purpose fairy tales of all lands are 
useful and interesting because they are really 
the outcome of racial myths of one kind or 
another. Look into a book like Fraser's 
Golden Bough, for example, and see what the 



HISTORY 151 

childhood of the race was like, and you will find 
many things to interest you as well as the child. 
It is interesting, sometimes, to take the pagan 
deities and see them under their various forms, 
Greek, Roman, Semitic, Norse and Germanic, 
and see the same idea change its form as it 
changes its climate and surroundings. But 
see to it that it is not left hanging in the air, 
unconnected with anything. Link German 
fairies and myths with Germany. Link Eng- 
lish stories with England. If you deal with 
the Arabian Nights get first of all a picture of 
Haroun and the Bagdad of his time fixed in 
the mind as a suitable prelude to the tales them- 
selves, Japanese and other Asiatic folklore 
will be found interesting as a variant from 
European matter. All this has historical 
value and is the beginning of history. You 
can easily tell the story of the Ten Thousand 
Greeks^ as Xenophon tells it, to a child, and 
with a map can follow the route they travelled 
and have all kinds of interesting moments. In 
every such case see that a personality stands 
out which makes the story radiate around him 
and his work, because this is the easiest way to 
fix the details in the mind. It brings a sort of 
consecutiveness to the narrative and helps to 
drop things into an orderly form. 

Most children are interested in the childhood 



152 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

of great men, and this by way of introduction, 
forms a very effective method of creating inter- 
est. Think of what may be done in this way, 
for example, with the story of Moses, begin- 
ning with the baby in the bulrushes ! And this 
again leads me to say that Egypt with its 
magic and mystery, is a wonderful field for this 
sort of thing. If you once make an outline of 
Moses' biography and reduce it to modern 
terms, and then read the classic passages from 
the Bible which tell that history, you have in 
fact started the child on what is known as the 
historic method by which all modern history 
writing is governed. 

Often the history of special groups makes an 
interesting historical excursion, as when, for 
example, you take up the Crusades and open 
up the wealth of material which they afford. 
Or, if you are interested in orders, take the 
Knights Templars, or the Knights Hospital- 
lers, or the Teutonic Knights, and work out 
their story, as any encyclopsedia or special 
works give it. It will be found very fruitful 
and be somewhat out of the common pathway. 
Don't be afraid to dip into unusual things, al- 
ways remembering that you tell about real 
people and real things, and fix in the mind 
somebody who had something to do with the 
events recorded. For American children, the 



HISTORY 153 

great discoverers, especially those of your own 
region, and the leading figures of American 
history, will be found useful. Such figures as 
De Soto, Pere Marquette, lend themselves to 
wonderful effect in opening and developing the 
historic sense. Similarly, the biography of 
Franklin or of Washington and others show 
what can be done in the way of integrating 
American history before the full importance of 
it is realized. The heroes of special sections 
like Daniel Boone or Sam Houston add the 
touch of local color and inspiration. Every por- 
tion of our land has such local figures and they 
should be studied first for themselves and then 
for their larger relations to the national life. 

But let this be at first objectively done. 
Just let the story tell itself and don't try to 
make it didactic in the sense of formally com- 
mitting and holding up the child to its mastery 
in formal way. If you do your work carefully 
the interest you excite will do that better than 
you can do it by formal insistence. Let the 
child repeat the story as often as possible by 
telling it over to others, or if told by one parent 
let it be repeated to the other. Such names 
readily become household words and when met 
with later on are old friends with whom the 
new relation of scholarly approach is readily 
cultivated. You will see how easily all this 



154 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

can be done in connection with the geography, 
because so many of the world great names are 
hnked with the physical configurations of the 
earth, as Hudson's Bay, or Magellan's Straits, 
and the like. In fact, these two usually go on 
parallel lines. When you meet the one, teach 
also the other. 

In the study of biography as history, pic- 
tures and photographs help a great deal, and 
whenever accessible should be freely employed. 
That visualizes what is taught and makes one 
more agency by which the memory will retain 
what is told. Often some curious phase of 
costume will cause most important historical 
matter to be fixed in the thought. As a 
preacher I have often found, and even more so 
as a teacher, that when I could link important 
historical events with something essentially out 
of the common, some odd legend, or striking 
piece of information, some linguistic twist, and 
then visualize it as with a blackboard, as I often 
did, the teaching survived, when without these 
devices it was often lost and forgotten. Make 
the freest use of these things. If you are in 
the neighborhood of museums use these, for 
that makes vivid and real what may otherwise 
be vague and dimly comprehended. I found 
it useful and suggestive often in the study of 



HISTORY 155 

some character in the history of the past to in- 
quire who of our contemporary figures it sug- 
gested, with some interesting and amusing 
results. My own children got special amuse- 
ment out of the habit of playfully dubbing the 
people who came to our house by names sug- 
gested by their resemblance to historical char- 
acters they had read about, or had brought to 
their attention. There is a field for much 
household fun here. Of course it must not be 
maliciously done. It can be kept in the area 
of pure mirth and is really great sport. The 
varieties of attitude of our friends toward 
them used to give the children occasion for 
much acting, and if people who are pompous, 
condescending, or contemptuous to children 
could only see these things as they live again in 
the nursery of carefully nurtured children, they 
would have some uncomfortable moments, 
which might not be entirely without desirable 
results! But in a similar way those who dis- 
play qualities of generosity, courtesy, patience, 
and especially evidence of real interest in child- 
hood, also have their reward. My own chil- 
dren will never forget the distinguished Greek 
scholar who told them the story of Charon by 
exhibiting a coin found in a Greek tomb to pay 
his fee. 



156 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

II 

The use of aocuments again makes history- 
study interesting and effective. Go to your 
library and look into Winsor's Narrative and 
Critical History of America^ by way of illus- 
tration, and you will see what a mine there is of 
interesting original documents, which by re- 
production form the basis of useful and illumi- 
nating history. "Now many of our national 
documents, like the Compact in the Mayflower, 
the Declaration of Independence, Penn's 
Treaty with the Indians and others, have been 
reproduced in inexpensive forms, which may 
easily be procured. That document is what is 
called a first source of history. Every time 
you use such a document you are using a 
source, and by them you can show how history 
is made and the study of history is developed. 
Your own court records are such sources. 
Soldiers' discharges, naturalization papers, cit- 
izenship papers, ballots, state constitutions, 
Thanksgiving proclamations, and official docu- 
ments, generally all fall in this class. It makes 
the thing talked about concrete to show the 
document around which the history revolves. 
The White Papers, the Yellow Papers, the 
Gray Papers, issued by the European govern- 
ments in the present war, are such first sources 



HISTORY 157 

of history. This matter is much more impor- 
tant than it seems, for, though you are using it 
only to make concrete and vivid what you are 
talking about, really you are inculcating the 
principle of research and of speaking, not at 
random but on the authority of somebody who 
has a right to speak. Nothing afflicts the 
American intellectual Ufe so much, or so pain- 
fully, at the present moment as irresponsible 
utterance. If you can by the use of docu- 
ments teach a child in its approach to any- 
thing, to ask for something that is authorita- 
tive, you will by one stroke make it immune 
from newspaper exaggeration and falsification, 
and loose talk generally, whatever the source. 
That is great gain for intellectual stability. 
There is nothing difficult or mysterious about 
it. Utilize the same instinct that makes a child 
take the stuffing out of a doll to find out what 
it is made of. It helps in reading, too. It 
enlarges the vocabulary. If you have a little 
dramatic sense you can make much of it. 

The Emancipation Proclamation in this way 
becomes a living document. So does the 
Magna Charta. So will Lincohi's Gettysburg 
Address, and so will many other important and 
interesting documents. Here again if you will 
look into the back of your Oxford Bible, or if 
you will get the Illustrated Bible Treasury, 



158 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

you will have a mass of material to your hand. 
I merely mention these because they will most 
readily show the process of seeing things at first 
hand, and recognizing that you are dealing not 
with second hand, but first hand material. It 
is a great revelation to children, and hardly 
less to adults, to contrast things in the form 
with which they are commonly known, with 
their original forms. When this can be done 
by pictures or documents so much the better. 
But you can easily lead from this practise with 
documents to something quite as fruitful and 
important. You can open the use of books of 
reference. Your use of the dictionary will 
already have started things in this direction 
and of this more later. But in finding these 
documents you can show how there are books 
which are simply collections of such documents. 
Professor A. B. Hart's American History 
Told by Contemporaries occurs to me in this 
connection. Here you have the actual actors, 
in the periods of which he deals, speaking in 
their own tongue, and giving the views and 
attitudes of eye-witnesses and actors in the 
drama of the making of the American republic. 
An ounce of this sort of study of American 
history is worth a ton of stupid, lifeless recital 
of events without a living personality behind 



HISTORY 159 

it, speaking in his native and contemporary 
tongue. There are many manuals of this sort 
pubHshed and they are easily accessible. 

Then again our government publishes many 
things of this sort which may be had for the 
asking. If for example you want to know 
about the state of education in South America, 
write to the Bureau of Education in Washing- 
ton and get its publication on that subject, 
which gives not only a wonderful series of 
facts, especially interesting to North Ameri- 
cans at this present time, but pictures of the 
South American universities and schools, some 
of them the oldest in the Western World, long 
preceding ours, by the way. The average 
American will have a very different idea of the 
South American repubhcs after reading this 
valuable little treatise. But our government 
publishes many such things about children, 
about industries, about national reserves, maps, 
documents, almost innumerable. Get the 
habit of writing for these documents. They 
are valuable often as information, but even 
more valuable as instruction in seeking and 
using sources of authority in the shape of doc- 
imients. All this simply anticipates what now 
freshmen have to be taught de novo. A child 
with this habit established will soon learn to 



160 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

look up matters on its own account and in the 
search of one thing will often find others 
equally or more valuable. 

This study of documents reveals many things 
which the writers of course did not intend. To 
read Francis Pretty's account of Sir Francis 
Drake's Voyage about the Whole Globe tells 
many more things than merely the account of 
the voyage itself, quite naturally. In a simi- 
lar way to read Kev. John Robinson's Ad- 
dress to the Departing Pilgrims at Leyden is 
a far more moving thing than the account of 
the voyage itself, full of moving details that 
is, as found in Bradford's History, The 
Tale of Pocahontas, by Raphe Hamor, secre- 
tary of the colony, is a pen picture of Virginia 
in Capt. John Smith's time not easily forgot- 
ten. It is thus that we get into the soul of his- 
tory and live it and make it our own. If you 
want to see the most impressive story of an 
Indian war get Edward Randolph's Causes 
and Results of King Philip's War, and you 
will understand it, as it is not possible to under- 
stand it from any mere history. This is a por- 
trayal of a group of events by a master hand 
that almost makes you see the contemporary 
figures. Thus the imagination is constantly 
reenforced by real materials, and the develop- 
ment of habits of verification, with the freest 



HISTORY 161 

emotional play of sympathy and understand- 
ing upon the events, makes the finest soil imag- 
inable for the building up of a finely furnished, 
tolerant and appreciative mind. That is what 
the study of history should do, and the greater 
use of original documents the more effective 
the result. 

"As a record," says Professor Hart, "sources 
are the basis of history, but not mere raw ma- 
terial like the herbaria of the botanist, or the 
chemicals of a laboratory, stuffs to be destroyed 
in discovering their nature; as utterances of 
men living when they were made, they have in 
them the breath of human life; history is the 
biology of human conduct, Nobody can settle 
any historical question without an appeal to 
the sources, or without taking into account the 
character of the actors in history." ^ 

It is just this element of the characters tell- 
ing their own story which gives the sources 
their importance, as they reveal motives and 
interests which could not be so securely estab- 
lished in any other way. A fellow voyager of 
La Salle will tell the story of the discoverer's 
ideas, expectations and experiences, as no his- 
torian, however gifted, could tell it. Dipping 
into town records in this way, following up 
genealogical histories and family documents, 

^American History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. I, p. 3. 



162 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

makes a most interesting habit for the child, 
beside teaching the importance of records, as 
such, the significance of which has abeady been 
discussed. These are not dead materials, they 
are the very life of the people involved, and so 
the contact is with the actual life of the past. 
In no other way can the assimilation of history 
be accomplished. But there are other living 
documents in the form of town charters, town 
monuments, which are always to be had. In 
the newer portions of our country very impor- 
tant interests can be created in this manner and 
often the development of a given section, influ- 
enced by what such studies bring forth. By 
the time high school age is attained, a well 
estabhshed habit of this kind may well have 
been created which may have lasting results in 
the keeping of important records. Few clerks 
of churches imagine that they are writing what 
will be in time to come, if they survive, as 
measures ought to be taken to see that they do 
survive, be important records of names, events, 
issues in the community life, perhaps personal 
interests of great historical value, through the 
fixing of dates of birth, baptism and the like. 
The church records of New England in this 
way are priceless in value, because so often 
carefully and painstakingly made. What 
would we not give if we had at this moment 



HISTORY 163 

more records of the personal history of Shaks- 
pere? How we would prize more of the early 
personal history of Lincoln or of many another 
personality that bulks so large in the history of 
our yet young country ! 

If all this seems rather mature to begin with 
three-year-olds or four-year-olds, let me sim- 
ply remind you that you would not hesitate an 
instant to read portions of letters from an 
absent mother to the children or those of 
an absent father, or any other member of 
the family. The comings and goings, the 
people seen, and the new and strange things 
encountered, would be of very great in- 
terest to such children about those whom they 
know and love. Why, then, may not a sim- 
ilar interest be possible in some of the great- 
est characters in history, especially when you 
can show their handwriting, some facsimile 
of their work, or some important event in which 
they have taken a part? Of course, much will 
depend upon your preparation for these things, 
and your manner of introducing it, and your 
own enthusiasm in handling it. But that it 
may be done admits of no reasonable doubt. I 
have seen children listen breathlessly to docu- 
ments which might at first seem to be beyond 
them. But by the time you explain that this 
woman was about to die for her opinions, you 



164. TEACHING IN THE HOME 

will iind that the reading of The Justification 
of a Condemned Quakeress, by Mary Dyer, a 
matter which will carry itself along and at the 
same time lay the foundation for tolerance, 
which is one of the greatest needs of our own 
time. You do not have to take up the silly 
fictions, which so many persons think it needful 
to offer children, to get matter that will inter- 
est and instruct. Historical documents with- 
out number are now within the reach of any 
parent who will take the trouble to ask for 
them. The leaflets of the Old South Histor- 
ical Society in Boston will be found most use- 
ful for this purpose. They are made up al- 
most exclusively of original documents dealing 
chiefly with New England. The local histor- 
ical societies in other localities doubtless have 
such material also. They furnish entertain- 
ment, instruction, and culture simultaneously. 
As this chapter is being concluded there 
comes an article in the New York Nation from 
its Paris correspondent which throws an inter- 
esting light upon this documentary study as it 
is being carried on throughout all grades in the 
schools of France at the present moment. 
The school system of France, as is well known, 
is a unit from the very bottom to the very top, 
presided over by a Minister of PubUc Instruc- 
tion. Says this correspondent: "It is the 



HISTORY 165 

Government's wish that all the students of 
France shall receive from the war raging at 
their frontier and in their midst the utmost civic 
instruction for the future'' All classes open 
with lectures and discussion of the war, its 
causes, etc., and the correspondent adds : ''In 
all the classes, also, according to their ca- 
pacities, documentary lessons are given. Each 
day in one of the most frequented Paris colleges 
the news given by one of the principal papers, 
comprising the official communications of the 
Allies and of the Germans and Austrians as 
well, are followed out on detailed mays, an- 
alyzed, compared and criticised. Beside the 
local knowledge of the war thus obtained, there 
is a certain reasonable opinion conveyed by the 
students to their families. It is easy to under- 
stand what influence this may exert against 
over-confidence or depression excited by exag- 
gerating what are, after all, little more than 
"tactical" incidents of little importance in the 
essential "strategy" and still less warranting 
any surmises as to decisive action. This is 
true civic education in calm, and deliberate 
judgment during trying times/' ^ 

The italics are my own. This description of 
how the students of France are getting the 
solidest kind of education for their future serv- 

1 The Nation, Jan. 28, 1915, p. 103. 



166 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ice as wise and useful citizens of the Republic 
was not written with any educational intent. 
But it describes exactly what I have in mind 
as to "documentary study" planned to the 
grade of comprehension by the parent teacher. 
There is hardly a single exercise which is more 
calculated to train the reasoning power, to de- 
velop judgment and investigation, than this 
sort of thing, about the current events of the 
world, the materials of daily conversation and 
interest. 

Ill 

Complete historical pictures should be made 
a further element in the teaching of history. 
By this expression I mean that far-reaching 
and important historical events should be pic- 
torialized in their completeness, rather than 
merely assigned their place in the chronology 
of the national or world history. By way of 
illustration, it is now comparatively easy when 
you talk of the Battle of Waterloo to get to- 
gether the pictures of the great actors on all 
sides of the warring nations. It is possible to 
get all kinds of material which bears on the 
battle itself, to collect poems relating to it, or 
growing out of it, passages in histories, or let- 
ters relating to it, and making that battle a 
complete historical picture, not as an English 



HISTORY 167 

victory or a French defeat, or even as an im- 
portant date in European history, but as a 
complete historical event viewed simultane- 
ously from all sides. Of course, how complete 
you make it depends upon the capacity of your 
child and the capacity of the teacher. But in 
any case you can mass all kinds of material, 
literary, pictorial, historical, geographical, all 
at the same time. If to this you add discussion 
of the changes in mihtary warfare, arms and 
equipment, and similar matters, you have an 
immense area to draw from to make the thing 
a sort of complete conspectus of the times 
viewed with reference to a single great event. 
If one will take Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Bat- 
tles of History, in this fashion there will be 
opened a field for instruction, entertainment, 
and inspiration which will be of vast effect in 
the child's outlook upon all events and that is 
the real purpose of this kind of study. We 
have reached a stage in the world's life, where 
nobody cares any longer for the English view, 
the German view, the French view, or the 
American view of anything except as these 
help us to know the truth, for the truth alone 
can make us free. What the world needs, and 
what is especially to be desired, in the training 
of future citizens is the ability to recognize that 
great events are not settled off hand, and that 



168 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

it requires investigation, deliberation, and 
weighing of evidence, to form any useful or 
sound judgment. 

Thus you create the habit of investigation. 
The child will unconsciously learn that the 
world was not made of things that do appear. 
It will learn to look behind any given mani- 
festation to its cause. It will learn in a rudi- 
mentary way to go about finding those causes, 
and will very likely ask a great many questions 
which you cannot answer, and which perhaps 
nobody can answer. But this of itself is not a 
thing to be regretted. Many things have to be 
left unanswered in this short life of ours, and 
the sooner that is understood the better for him 
who understands it. Still, it is wise to begin 
early the investigating habit. It helps to train 
the reasoning power. It helps concentration 
because it fixes the attention on one thing, but 
from so many different angles that it creates a 
sort of sporting interest as to how the thing 
will eventually come out. It teaches how to 
suspend judgment. Hitherto we have taught 
children history very much as we have taught 
them the multiplication table and with about 
the same result, which is nothing worth having. 
The Discovery of America, taken in this way, 
will lead all round the world and take in not 
only Columbus but the preparatory events in 



HISTORY 169 

the world, and will make that event a much 
prof ounder thing than any single man's daring 
and desire to find the New World. If you 
take the Invention of Printing in this way you 
will be led into a veritable wonder world and 
one that will more than repay all efforts put 
into it. Take for example such a man as 
Roger Bacon and run down all the wonderful 
stories and legends about him and you will find 
the telephone, the submarine, and the aero- 
plane, ten times as interesting as they are, and 
that is itself something wonderful. Get all 
around particular things in the history of your 
own land, in the history of other lands, whether 
it is the history of individuals, of events, or dis- 
coveries, or what not. The investigating habit 
is perfectly natural with children, and only 
needs intelligent directing. Whether it is util- 
ized for real educational purposes or left to 
drift into mere curiosity about useless common- 
places depends upon you. For this purpose, 
a little note-book carried around for jotting 
down curious and interesting things, is very 
useful. 

This habit is particularly useful for recrea- 
tional purposes. Painters and paintings, 
sculptors and sculptures, art objects generally, 
lend themselves to many miscellaneous kinds of 
mental fertilization through this habit. But 



170 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

properly it begins with something of world in- 
terest and importance around which many other 
kinds of knowledge are grouped, which shows 
how truly all knowledge is coordinated and how 
the developed mind looks at things which call 
for observation and judgment. This idea will 
reappear again when we come to talk about sci- 
ence in general and particular sciences. But 
the fact that things having historical impor- 
tance can be pictorialized and lend themselves 
to narrative and dramatic form in teaching, 
makes history the field where it can be done 
with least resistance and greatest results. 

Nor should it be overlooked that this method 
has another very important bearing upon all 
kinds of study. Almost the first thing now re- 
quired for the effective knowledge of any sub- 
ject is to find out the history of the study of 
the subject. That tends to reveal what has 
been done and where advances may properly 
be begun. Of course this has httle to do with 
teaching young children. But it has every- 
thing to do with saving or wasting time. 
There is no use, for example, except as a mat- 
ter of self-indulgence, for anybody who is not 
historically occupied with the story of trans- 
portation to go into the details of the earliest 
means of locomotion. It may be pleasant to 
know that cars were once drawn by horses, but 



HISTORY 171 

it is a sheer waste of time to go and dig up 
horse cars and expound them. We Hve in an 
age of electric transportation, and the child 
should begin there and use the past merely as 
furnishing the means of contrast, and as 
enriching the present. It is much more im- 
portant to know that a gun is now made that 
can fire a thousand-pound projectile ten or 
fifteen miles than to know what the calibre of 
the cannons in the Napoleonic wars was. It is 
interesting, of course, if you happen to run 
across the information, but not worth while 
taking time to find out. It still remains true 
that one must know in a general way the his- 
tory of the past before one can appreciate the 
present or forecast the future. To know how 
to go about this is the important thing, and 
recognize its necessity under some conditions 
is the decisive element in the premises. 

Thus, why a general took one route rather 
than another, why a nation chose one alliance 
rather than another, why one invention suc- 
ceeded where another failed, why one man of 
great ability failed where another of conspic- 
uously lesser ability succeeded, why national 
development followed one path rather than 
another, all these and similar things, require 
going back over the ground and showing 
what helped and what hindered any given re- 



172 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

suit. Often the reason will be climate, some- 
times geography, sometimes the season of the 
year, sometimes an agricultural interest, some- 
times a manufacturing interest, sometimes a 
hasty or foolish speech, sometimes a silent 
tongue ; all these are historical causes and sub- 
jects for reflection and discussion. There are 
no accidents in history. Everything has a 
cause, and sometimes is itself both cause and 
efect. To master that truth is itself to grasp 
in childhood a tool of knowledge which is of 
supremest importance. Applied to personal 
concerns, like money, occupation, industry, sac- 
rifice, and the like, it is the story of the life 
of mankind. 



CHAPTER VII 

SCIENCE IN GENERAL 

The most recent report of the United States 
Commissioner of Education points out that 
there is lamentable lack of coordination in our 
high schools in the study of science. As a 
matter of fact it cannot be said that there is 
such study at all, because the courses are not 
related to each other, and the student simply 
takes what happens to come along, almost 
without reference to what preceded it or ought 
to follow it. Perhaps as our high schools are 
now constituted and held firmly in the grip of 
the college requirements for admission, with 
which they have nothing to do, about which 
they are not consulted, and for which they have 
nothing to do but prepare their students, this 
is only what is to be expected. 

But there is behind all this a much graver de- 
fect about which I wish to say a few words be- 
fore taking up study with little children of 
specific sciences, and that is the lack of the 
understanding of science in general. Science 
and the scientific spirit have been made the 

173 



174 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

subject of so much discussion that a recent 
writer has even ventured to say that many- 
teachers of science are not scientific persons at 
all. It may well be that this is true. Just as 
the requirements for admission in Enghsh 
almost of necessity preclude teaching of liter- 
ature, so that the young people come to college 
without any knowledge of literature, or any 
appreciation of literature, so they come without 
any knowledge of science per se and no 
scientific sense properly socalled. But if the 
present program is to go on, and there is no 
reason to expect that it will be readily changed, 
because the educational machine is so vast, that 
changes when they do come come very slowly 
and are dependent upon the vast army of 
teachers who have to be changed also, for the 
present it may as well be taken for granted that 
there will be no radical changes very soon. 

Yet to have something of the scientific spirit 
from the start is almost the sine qua non of 
effective education. What has already been 
said with reference to the other subjects will 
have prepared the reader for what is now to be 
suggested. Science is a habit of mind rather 
than anything else. It is a specific form of ap- 
proach to Imowledge, which clearly differ- 
entiates itself from other forms of approach. 
To get this habit of coming to any subject is 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 175 

itself a kind of science, and that is the reason 
why there is so much discussion now as to the 
psychological relations of all kinds of human 
activity. It is now recognized very clearly 
that merely to get facts is not science. Indeed 
whether these so-called "facts" are facts, de- 
pends upon the mind of the investigator. 
Many a man thinks he is doing a scientific 
piece of work, merely to gather, laboriously 
enough, great masses of "facts" which have 
some relation, more or less, to the subject in 
hand. To watch a chemical reaction is no 
more scientific study than to watch the wheels 
of an automobile go round. It may be such, 
but merely watching the process does not make 
it science. 

The same may be true of a great many other 
things that are called science. The so-called 
science courses in high schools have little or 
nothing to do with science in its real essence 
and meaning. That is the reason why you can 
do most of them with little children, as I am 
about to advise you to do. By the time your 
child reaches high school age and work he 
should be capable of doing something far more 
complex and important than the simple things 
which are done there and which, except on their 
mathematical side, may be done readily enough 
by very young children. Most of it is merely 



176 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

memoriter work, dealing with things they have 
done, and the experiments do not usually, ac- 
cording to my observation, yield anything of 
the scientific habit of mind. This is true even 
of college students to a great degree. It is of 
great importance that children should be 
guided, so that the scientific habit will by and 
by be taken for granted, and the intellectual 
expectations and efforts molded and directed 
accordingly. It is mainly to indicate what 
this scientific habit involves that this chapter is 
written. It is to avoid the error, which is made 
in many other things, which assumes merely 
that information is knowledge. It is not. It 
becomes knowledge only when it is classified. 
So the things called science are science only 
when they spring from a scientific habit. 



The scientific spirit begins with the habit of 
inquiry. It is essentially the spirit of skepti- 
cism. But do not let this frighten you. Most 
of the troubles in this world come because peo- 
ple will not take the trouble to inquire. Half 
the frauds of the world would disappear if the 
people who become victims of them would care- 
fully inform themselves and analyze the prob- 
ability of what is promised has of being per- 
formed. Now the child naturally likes to in- 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 177 

quire. Its sense of wonder is natural, and in 
this it epitomizes the history of the race. I 
am not urging that you destroy this sense of 
wonder, because it is, in the first place, one of 
the best permanent possessions of humanity, 
and in the second place is the souifce of imagi- 
native power which must be cultivated and not 
suppressed. But nobody ought to ''wonder' 
about things that can be found out by effort. 
You wonder whether or that thing you see in 
the papers is true. Well, most of them can 
be verified, if they are true. You wonder if 
such a statement is true. Well, you can look 
up the authorities and find out. There is no 
reason why one should stay in wonderland 
about things which are within the reach of dis- 
covery. You have a right to "wonder" about 
things which are beyond you, but not about 
those about you, which, if you make the natu- 
ral and reasonable efforts at inquiry, you can 
find out for yourself. For instance, why 
should anybody wonder about his income and 
expenditures? Apparently most people do 
wonder about them, to their great detriment. 
It is just so about many other things. 

Now the scientific spirit of inquiry raises 
first of all the question on any subject whether 
it is a subject on which inquiry will help. Is 
it knowable or not? Whether we shall wear 



178 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

robes of white in Heaven may be safely set 
down as not a subject for scientific inquiry. 
It never can be known. But whether we shall 
to-day wear a heavy dress or a light one, and 
the reasons therefor, are easily ascertainable. 
The inquiring spirit takes nothing for granted 
and asks first of all, is it true. And even be- 
fore that, it asks can it be known. That is 
how the scientific spirit begins, and this is of 
much greater importance than any mere fact 
or set of facts. 

This spirit is the real working power behind 
many things which seem to be alien to it. You 
look at a beautiful picture, and admire its col- 
oring, its perspective, and its finished and de- 
lightful presentation of its theme. But you 
do not see the laborious studies behind it, 
which were necessary before that picture could 
be painted. Behind all art, there is the science 
of drawing, and a vast deal of observation and 
experiment, and a great deal of inquiry and 
verification of all sorts of things, which in 
themselves have no beauty whatever. You 
hear a beautiful symphony or sonata, and you 
are thinking only of the charming emotions 
which are created in you, by the sounds you 
hear and their performance upon an instru- 
ment. But you do not see the laborious ef- 
forts which had to precede that composition 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 179 

before it reached its finished state. You look 
at a beautiful cathedral, but you do not think 
of the mathematical calculations and the 
drudgery which had to be gone through with 
before that beautiful building came into being. 
All these are the scientific background of ar- 
tistic creation. There is a general delusion 
that these things spring, so to speak, like Mi- 
nerva, full-armed, out of the head of Jupiter. 
IN'othing is farther from the truth. There 
used to be a story that Mr. Lincoln wrote the 
Gettysburg address on his cuff on the way 
down from Washington to the famous battle 
field. It is now known, I believe, that there 
are several recensions of that sublime bit of 
Enghsh composition. You sit down and eat 
a slice of delicious bread. But you rarely 
think of the skill, the precision, and the care 
which went into the baking, of which, if one 
single element were left out, as I left the 
salt out of some loaves I once baked, makes the 
most beautiful appearing loaf of bread a fail- 
ure. It had all the appearance of success, till 
you tasted it ! 

"Paraphrasing," says Herbert Spencer, "an 
Eastern fable, we may say that in the house- 
hold of knowledges science is the household 
drudge, who in obscurity hides unrecognized 
perfections. To her has been committed all 



180 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

the work; by her skill, intelligence and devo- 
tion, have all conveniences and gratifications 
been obtained; and while ceaselessly minister- 
ing to the rest, she has been kept in the back- 
ground, that her haughty sisters might flaunt 
their fripperies in the eyes of the world. The 
parallel holds yet further. For we are fast 
coming to the denouement when the positions 
will be changed; and while these haughty sis- 
ters sink into merited neglect. Science, pro- 
claimed as highest in worth and beauty, 
will reign supreme." This certainly goes far 
enough, and probably too far. But there is 
a substantial truth here, which must be recog- 
nized very early in life, and the sooner it is rec- 
ognized the happier and more effective life 
will be. 

The real beginning point for the scientific 
spirit is a sort of wholesome unbelief in mere 
appearances. You can readily mystify a 
child, as I often did, with a reflecting mirror 
throwing a flashing gleam all around the room, 
and talking about the flying sunbeams. But 
you do better to show the child how the thing 
is done, and how light plays such curious 
pranks, and how reflections come to make such 
weird appearances as they often do. Such a 
spirit carefully nurtured will make any child 
go into the darkest room, which it has known 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 181 

in daylight, with no more fear than it would in 
the daytime. A child so trained will stand 
perfectly still, watching some unusual phe- 
nomenon, until it can bring all its previous ex- 
periences to bear upon it, for its real under- 
standing. This habit of unbelief leads to eoc- 
pulsion of fear. This is what you do when 
you lead a very little child up to a very big dog, 
and prove to it that it has nothing to fear, that 
the big animal only wants to be petted, not to 
do any harm. It is only by such trying out 
that we ever get over the vast mass of our nat- 
ural fears of the strange and unusual. 

"Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek 
and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened 
to you," represents the real beginning of the 
scientific spirit, and doubtless this was in the 
Master's mind in urging his hearers to en- 
deavor to get acquainted with the higher spir- 
itual processes not by way of conjecture but 
by way of eccperiment. The spirit of inquiry 
which finds out or seeks to find out all there is 
to be found out about anything and everything 
is the primary impulse that develops in a sci- 
entific frame of mind. It is not mere critical 
refusal to believe. It is a desire to know. 
Personally I believe that this desire to know 
is the secret of concentration, because the in- 
terest has been aroused^ and is held to the sub- 



182 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ject in hand, by the desire to know the truth 
about it, and this makes for sustained atten- 
tion and effort. This habit of mind is the 
easiest and surest way known to me, of getting 
the habit of concentrated attention, 

II 

The desire to know the truth about any- 
thing, and a critical frame of mind toward it, 
brings irresistibly in its train a study of causes 
and hence familiarity with the relation of cause 
and effect. Now the study of causes, itself, 
has a very bracing effect on the mental life, be- 
cause it leads naturally to the question as to 
whether this or that cause, could or would have 
produced, this or that result. This leads not 
only to the examination of the cause, as pro- 
ducing the special thing to be explained, but 
its general adequacy to produce anything. 
Suppose you perform some slight-of-hand 
trick with a handkerchief with your little three- 
year-old child. You try to give the impres- 
sion that it drops down from the ceiling. 
(Your little one looks up and around, and if 
you watch the process, you can see him coming 
to the conclusion that this is impossible, be- 
cause he sees perfectly clearly that the implied 
process could not have taken place, and hence 
it begins to look around your pockets, or seeks 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 183 

your other hand, or tries to find out some other 
real and possible cause for what he has seen. 
Now of course you can let the child find out 
such things unaided. But I think it better 
policy to take such occasions to show how opti- 
cal illusions are produced, and lead the child to 
try such tricks himself. That I call the begin- 
ning of the scientific spirit, because it is not 
merely attracted to an unusual thing to know 
about it, as a matter of curiosity, but also to 
seek for a real cause of the thing he sees. In 
scientific circles they call that a vera causa. 

Again, when children are playing hide and 
seek, and they stop and listen for the voice of 
the hidden playmate, what are they doing but 
trying to determine whence the sound comes, 
and so to the discovery of the hiding 
place? What children thus do naturally at 
play should become a habit of mind, and may 
readily become so with very little attention. 
You can teach any number of elementary 
truths and scientific principles to very young 
children by remembering this fact. I have 
often asked my own children, and other chil- 
dren, who have lost a plaything, to stand still 
and try to recall, step by step, where they had 
been since they last saw the article in question. 
I have seen them gradually lessen the area 
within which it had to be, by balancing partly. 



184 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

by remembering partly, the reasons for or 
against a given place, and finally go straight 
to the article, because, by what was strictly 
scientific reasoning, they had eliminated all 
places but the right place. 

When a child digs up the roots of a plant to 
see whether they are growing or not, when it 
digs out a seed that has been planted to find 
out whether it has begun to germinate or not, 
you have natural manifestations of this spirit. 
When you can show that a reasonable time 
must elapse before results may be expected, 
and when you can bring the various factors in 
growth to the understanding, and have fixed 
observation upon them, you have begun to cre- 
ate a real scientific spirit. There is no rea- 
son why this process should not be applied to 
all kinds of things. Made habitual, when the 
child strikes a laboratory, it will make a 
use of the laboratory which not one child in a 
thousand makes at the present time. But the 
simple truth is that what students at high 
school age now do under direction is so simple, 
and so elementary, that an intelligent parent, 
even one who has had no scientific training, 
can do it with little children, if only they can 
read. I have taught almost all that high 
schools generally teach about physiology, to 
little children, with the aid of a manikin and 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 185 

pictures of the human body, and little experi- 
ments with themselves, which they could make 
and did make, with great pleasure and amuse- 
ment to themselves. 

Children should he taught to search for 
causes of things. Here I am reminded again, 
that many persons will say that this is not the 
thing for little children, and that it tends to de- 
stroy the illusions and innocent delights of 
children in "wondering." All I have to say 
to this is, that most of the healthy children I 
have known have always loved their own crea- 
tions very much more than they have loved 
ready-made things thrust upon, or supplied to 
them. And I believe there is no subject un- 
der the wide heaven in which a child will not 
be more interested to work out the result itself 
than to have somebody work it out for him. 
And the search for causes is the most interest- 
ing exercise of the human mind known. That 
is why boys like to "track" an imaginary en- 
emy through the woods and over the fields to 
his "lair." That is why some of the most pop- 
ular games are games like hare and hounds, 
which involve pursuit with the matching of 
skill in the matter of elusion of the pursuers 
by the pursued. All these things are merely 
reminiscences of the childhood of the race, 
when the laws of the mind were not known and 



186 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

understood. But why should not our children 
begin in this matter where we left off? Why 
should they not be shown how water becomes 
contaminated, how milk becomes bad, how all 
kinds of food decay, and how many other 
things take place, the result of which they can 
plainly see, but the processes of which seem oc- 
cult and which need only a little intelligent 
direction and possibly the occasional use of a 
microscope or a magnifying glass, to reveal? 
For a child to learn and incorporate into its 
habitual mental life the principle that nothing 
happens without a cause is a very great gain. 
The earher it is mastered the greater the gain. 

Ill 

What has just been said will show the child 
that what can be done once can probably be 
done again. That comes naturally to children 
who see anything unusual performed. That 
was the reason the child to whom I showed 
what you could do with a common mirror, 
in making sun flashes dance all around the 
room, instantly seized the mirror from my 
hand, and tried to do it herself. What 
that means is, simply, trying the exper- 
iment herself. Hence experimentation is 
connected inseparably with the genuine sci- 
entific attitude. What the child, before the 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 187 

experiment by itself, regards wonderingly as 
the product of your genius, or your skill, hav- 
ing performed it itself, it takes out of the re- 
gion of wonder and places in the category of 
proved knowledge. Of course, the child does 
not always know this, nor, of course, does it 
consciously aim at this end. But that is what 
it really does, and you know it, though the child 
does not. But every time this is done, it 
breeds the belief in the child that what you have 
done, it can do, and this is an important ad- 
vance. It leads not only to the habit of finding 
causes, but to the habit of eocperimenting with 
things to see what they will do under certain 
conditions. I remember very vividly one such 
"experiment" which made an impression on 
my mind, which has never been eradicated. 
Some building operations had been going on 
in our vicinity, while I was a very small boy, 
and I learned for the first time that unslacked 
lime, if you put it in water, "boils." That in- 
terested me very much, and presently I got 
some of this lime and put it into a bottle, added 
some water, and corked it up very tightly. I 
watched with a good deal of pleasure and in- 
terest the boihng inside, till the bottle became 
so hot that I could not hold it, and began to 
be afraid as to what would happen. I hur- 
riedly sat the bottle down by the side of the 



188 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

new building, one, by the way, faced with very 
fine bricks of special mold and quality, and 
ran to the opposite side of the street. In a 
very few moments the bottle burst, that is, the 
cork flew out and the boiling hme with it, and 
painted a most interesting picture upon the 
new and costly brick wall before which I stood ! 
It took several men several days to get the 
stuff off from those new bricks, so that the 
marks did not remain, and what I got from my 
parents, who had to pay the bill for the dam- 
age done, may as well be left untold! That 
was, of course, an undirected eooperiment. 
But many others, and of much more worth and 
value (none could be more interesting), may 
be made under direction, which may have thus 
great educational worth, and even greater psy- 
chological results. 

It is my conviction based upon a great deal 
of careful observation that many of the so- 
called mischievous pranks of young children 
is nothing more than the desire to "try out," 
otherwise experiment, with things they have 
seen other people do, and is a thoroughly 
sound and worthy activity on the part of chil- 
dren. So far from being naughtiness, it is 
just the instinct, upon which to graft a sound 
principle of scientific habit. 

It is sometimes said that this sort of thing 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 189 

will destroy the sense of mystery in children, 
and affect the imagination unfavorably. On 
the contrary, I believe it rather stimulates the 
imagination healthfully, because it takes it out 
of the region where it is merely dreamy specu- 
lation, which weakens will-power, and lifts it 
into regions where it causes the exercise of the 
will in the direction of real knowledge. Noth- 
ing in modern education is so pitiful as just 
the result which has been produced in so many 
cases, namely, dreamy persons, with a good 
deal of miscellaneous knowledge of one kind 
and another, but with clear knowledge about 
nothing in particular. Eocperiment tends to 
destroy this kind of thing because, as already 
stated, it takes nothing for granted, and asks, 
continually, the why and the wherefore of 
everything. An incidental, but wholly worth 
while, result of the experimenting habit is that 
it provides wholesome occupation for children. 
When tired of one kind of exercise, the teach- 
ing parent can readily provide some other kind 
which will both interest and relieve, but the 
process of mind training goes on all the time. 
And this experimenting habit can go on all 
the year round, with plants, with animal pets, 
with simple machinery in physics and chem- 
istry, with physiology, and all kinds of things 
which are the raw materials, so to speak, of 



190 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

scientific knowledge. Of course, you under- 
stand that you choose simple things and deal 
with them simply, but you do not deal with 
them without dealing with them accurately 
and in scientific terms. That is the special 
feature of this form of intensive treatment. 
You are preparing the soil in which real learn- 
ing may be planted at a much earlier period 
than is usual, because the principles are under- 
stood and so many things do not have to he 
unlearned because wrong ideas have been 
planted in the subsoil. 

IV 

One other, and perhaps the most important, 
thing in dealing with science in general is the 
inoculation of the habit of measurement. 
Substantially the whole of science rests upon 
this principle, measurement. In former days, 
the housewife made her bread, and could make 
it herself, and after long practice her daugh- 
ter could get the "knack" of making it as her 
mother did. But it remained a '"knack" 
Nowadays we measure the materials, and any- 
body who can measure accurately can get to- 
gether the materials as well as anybody else. 
The same is true of many other things. What 
makes a cook-book so valuable is that the 
young wife can take it, and if she knows how 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 191 

to measure, she can get the same result as any- 
body else, because she has her formula before 
her. All the sciences have practically grown 
out of this fact. The measurement of the 
movement of the heavenly bodies has taught 
us about the seasons, and so have affected our 
crops and many other things. Measurement 
has given us all the applied sciences, and if you 
teach a child not to guess at things, but meas- 
ure them, you have taught it the greatest prin- 
ciple in all education. 

Teach the child to measure, dry measure, 
liquid measure, length, breadth, thickness, 
bulk, all kinds of things, to note resemblances 
and differences, and equivalents, and the like. 
That is real scientific training. No end of 
pleasure can be gotten out of time measure- 
ments and weight measurements, and the rela- 
tion of bulk to weight and the like. I had 
great pleasure myself in weighing all kinds of 
things to make one pound, with my own chil- 
dren, and the difference in bulk of the various 
things weighed was a great delight to the chil- 
dren. You can do all these things without ex- 
pensive machinery, and with common house- 
hold objects and substances. You may add 
somewhat to your own knowledge by doing 
these things. By this means, you can teach 
the metric system to a small child, and you can 



192 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

teach all the ordinary forms of measure, with- 
out the child ever knowing when or where it 
learned them. You can teach the whole deci- 
mal system^ and, as I think, you can teach per- 
centage and some other things supposed to be 
beyond the understanding of little children. 
But aside from that, measure everything. 
Weigh everything. Compare everything with 
everything else by means of accurate measure- 
ment. 

You can do yourself and the child a serv- 
ice by weighing everything you buy, or meas- 
uring it, if you get it by measure, and finding 
out a great many things that have a moral 
bearing, and possibly have some relation to the 
question of income and expenditure. Re- 
cently, in Boston, some hundreds of false 
scales were seized by the city authorities, which 
shows that a great many people are not get- 
ting what they pay for. You may do your 
child an important economic service entirely 
apart from the educational service by incul- 
cating this habit. The American people are 
notoriously wasteful. A great deal of it will 
be stopped by the general adoption of this 
method. I have heard of some very funny 
stories of discoveries which children made in 
this manner, which had entirely escaped their 
parents, because their curiosity to know what 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 193 

certain things weighed made it clear that there 
was need for important revision of the weigh- 
ing apparatus in the neighboring stores! In 
this, as in some other things, a little child shall 
lead them! 

All the sciences require eccactitude. That 
is what makes them science. The elimination 
of personahty, making the knowledge to rest 
not upon "knack" or peculiar skill or aptitude, 
but upon verifiable measurements, that is what 
makes science. You can teach that to very 
young children, and most important teaching 
it is. It is really solving the practical prob- 
lems in this way, which makes for the only ef- 
fective science teaching even after the child 
has reached high school age. And I believe 
that much of the repugnance to mathematics, 
though, as I have stated before, I do not be- 
lieve the pure mathematics have much educa- 
tional value, would disappear with the general 
adoption of this habit for children. It human- 
izes figures and measurements, and because it 
deals with real things it is never out of the re- 
gion of active interest and pleasure. Taken 
in connection with geographical study, it can 
be made most fascinating and full of historical 
interest as well. You see all these things are 
linked together in such a way that it makes 
little difference where you begin if you keep 



194 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

in mind that you must deal with real knowl- 
edge in a real way. 

It does not require much discernment either, 
to see that this kind of thing prepares the way 
for economics as well as for other things. 
Supply and demand can be brought easily into 
the field of vision here, always, of course, deal- 
ing with things that are related to the child's 
environment. We found out, for example, 
that grinding the coffee for each meal, instead 
of having it ground in bulk at the store, re- 
duced the consumption of coffee in our house- 
hold exactly one-half, under ordinary condi- 
tions. Incidentally we had better coffee! 
But that discovery was not only interesting , 
hut economically worth while. The children, 
under their mother's instruction, followed the 
progress of foodstuffs through all their rami- 
fications, till they finally became what they 
called quite accurately the "ghost" in the shape 
of the flavor of the bones of a roast, for exam- 
ple, in the final soup! Talk about home eco- 
nomics! We had the ordinary home econom- 
ics school beaten a mile! But the enchanting 
thing about all this was, that we had innumer- 
able household jokes and endless mirth over 
what would seem ordinarily to be the most 
mirthless transaction imaginable. Do not im- 
agine that you must learn all the jargon of 



SCIENCE IN GENERAL 195 

science, so called, before you can do these 
things. Just utilize the knowledge which you 
have, and make it straightforward and clear 
as you go along, and the rest will ordinarily 
take care of itself. When you don't know 
about the thing you are dealing with, go to 
the library and get some book on the subject, 
or consult a good encyclopsedia, and you will 
not only learn what you are seeking, but very 
likely a good many other things beside! 

Let me caution you again against being de- 
terred from doing these things because they 
seem alien to childhood. A few days ago a 
friend of ours brought in a nine-months-old 
baby. By turning on and off various electric 
lights with that child, I proved to myself how 
a little care in such matter, every day, will se- 
cure highly concentrated attention. I did 
some such experiments with my own children, 
but not very extensively. I did not, of course, 
know then what I know now. I know now 
that you can teach a child of ten all the chem- 
istry and more, than most students know at 
college entrance. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PHYSIOLOGY 

Under this caption I suggest the inclusion 
of many other subjects, and have chosen this 
as the most convenient way of getting at them 
all. There are so many things which come 
into the study of physiology that it may 
well be made the medium through which you 
may teach other sciences which will have larger 
uses later on. It is presumed before you get 
to the matters which I am discussing in this 
chapter that you will have informed yourself 
on details by reading some good text-book 
which you will not think of discussing with the 
children, and which will only affect the form 
and method with which you bring them to the 
children. One of these is the matter of sex. 
I believe thoroughly in seoo instruction, and I 
believe in giving it and getting through with it 
long before the adolescent period. With very 
little children you can discuss all these things 
carefully and, I may add, prayerfully, so that 
there will be no disturbance when the new life 

196 



PHYSIOLOGY 197 

comes, and there will be other things to think 
about, because you have provided the materials 
of thought. I have noted in the bibliography 
a volume or two which I think parents may 
read with profit on this subject, and then trans- 
mit the Ivnowledge to their little children, and 
then, having taught itj leave it. It is not a 
subject for high degree of concentration of 
thought by either children or adults. 

But there are other things which may be in- 
cluded and taught here. The elements of 
chemistry, for example, come in here very nat- 
urally, because the body is composed of many 
elements, and the vocabulary of chemistry is 
an interesting one which lends itself to much 
and varied teaching in many ways on various 
subjects. It recurs in the study of botany, 
and zoology. Then again here you get in your 
mathematics of one kind and another. This 
is where I should get in my elementary arith- 
metic as measurements have to be recorded. 
Very well, learn linear measure and square 
measure and the metric system in connection 
with the measurements as they are made, and 
thus take away the bareness and the stupidity 
with which so much mathematical study is sur- 
rounded. Here, too, I would learn the multi- 
plication tables, though these I would master 
by singing them ; of course, the figures having 



198 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

been mastered and simple nmnbers having 
been explained. 

Here, too, I would teach my physics, that is, 
so much of it as is needful, and this again will 
have significance later on just as the measure- 
ments and the tables will. All these things go 
hand in hand, because you are fertilizing and 
are not trying to make experts, but just nat- 
uralizing your child in the materials and termi- 
nology of knowledge, so that it will presently 
have the all-powerful tool of grappling with 
any subject to which its mind is set, and to- 
ward which it is directed to work. 

By way of illustration, take the chemical 
terms oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, 
chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, for one group; 
then take air, about which you can manufac- 
ture about as many stories as you please, with 
every sort of illustration; or, take the metallic 
elements which are found in the human body, 
like sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, 
and iron; then again take water, as related to 
the body, or the gases, like ammonia and car- 
bonic acid gas, or the various salts, or the or- 
ganic substances like proteids, carbo-hydrates 
and fats; all these things form a natural and 
thoroughly interesting beginning of the study 
of physiology, though many of them are not 
less needful in other sciences. 



PHYSIOLOGY 199 

Some one will say, of course, How can you 
deal with these things with small children? 
Well, the most natural question of a child is, 
"What am I made of?" and then your opening 
is secured, and far back of the physiological 
question itself, you can introduce all these 
other interesting subjects. It is not my pur- 
pose to go into them here, because that is a mat- 
ter for your assimilation through some good 
text-booh. But when you yourself have got 
this information and made it your own, 
you will have a wonderland to introduce your 
child to in introducing it to the study of itself. 
In this way the interest in its own body and 
its own processes is detached from the intro- 
spective emotionalism, which often results in 
trouble, and reveals the human frame as a 
wonderful composition of things which are 
found elsewhere than there, and the correlation 
of man with the rest of nature becomes easy 
and fascinating. You can readily use the 
chemistry of common things to illustrate the 
power and use of these various substances, and 
make your bread making, your house hghting, 
your vacuum cleaner, and your ventilation, 
subjects for much instruction and interesting 
experimentation. You can teach exact meas- 
urements by the shoes the children wear, the 
garments with which they are clothed, the cir- 



200 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

cumference and diameter and shape and all 
sorts of things, of the hats on the heads, and 
even the materials of which all these are made. 
It all helps and it is all scientific knowledge. 
It has a very practical use, too, because it 
opens up the economic worth of these 
things and teaches discrimination. That saves 
money ! 

How practical and how immediate this sort 
of thing really is, was recently illustrated by 
an exciting discussion in the Massachusetts 
Legislature on the subject of calcium in bread, 
and for days, the papers were full of discussion 
as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the 
use by a certain large bread-making firm of 
this element in its bread. There was all sorts 
of expert testimony, all very interesting, but 
most people had not the slightest appreciation 
of the real merits of the discussion, because so 
few of them knew even a very little about the 
human body, or the chemistry of bread-mak- 
ing. And only a very little knowledge would 
have been very enlightening and saved a great 
deal of nonsense being talked on the subject. 

Then again, you will find it useful to get a 
small manikin, and while it is not at first sight 
an easy task to take the human frame apart 
and get much fun out of it, yet with healthy 
children this is exactly what they will enjoy. 



PHYSIOLOGY 201 

because they do it with every other animal that 
comes into their hands, and taking the stuffing 
out of dolls has become one of the regular hab- 
its of children. A manikin or suitable pic- 
tures of the human body will afford vast inter- 
est to children. Of course you will choose 
your materials, and you will choose your times 
and seasons. 

You can thus make scientific, what parents 
have to do and always do in any case. Habits 
of cleanliness about the teeth, the nose, the 
hands, the face, and the feet, the care of the 
nails, and such like matters, may be discussed 
and made the subjects of direct and thor- 
oughly accurate instruction. If, as some al- 
lege, the care of the teeth has so much to do 
with the future health and happiness of the 
race, and I do not doubt that it has, why not 
go into the business of showing how the teeth 
grow, what they are made of, what elements 
in food go to make them, how they decay, what 
makes them give trouble, and how they look 
not only on the outside but also on the inside? 
Think what an interesting study can be made 
of the ears, and how they transmit sounds, and 
how they furnish the model for many other in- 
struments that transmit sound! Just look 
into the subject a little, and find how your 
telephone, your piano, your phonograph, are 



202 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

all related to the ear, and you will have all the 
material you want for teaching all that needs 
to be known to insure care of the ears forever 
after ! 

While the children are playing with clay or 
in the sand let them make impressions or mod- 
els of their own fingers or hands, and notice the 
details, and perhaps draw them and keep the 
drawings for further use. By and by you can 
take other organs. I cannot myself under- 
stand why a child which sees a chicken dis- 
embowelled cannot have every organ ex- 
plained, and the similar organ in the human 
body, if there is one, also explained. Look 
into the history of special organs about which 
the child will hear very soon, like the tonsils^ 
and get a page out of the evolution of the race ! 
You can easily get a model, or at least 
pictures of the eye and its operations, and this 
will be of the very greatest interest, and should 
not only give them, but you, a good deal of 
material for reflection and discussion. But 
here again you will keep to the ea^act termi- 
nology and not let yourself talk down. The 
fact that you are handling concrete things will 
carry along some very hard words. And they 
will stick. I once blew up a pair of lungs for 
some young people. Again and again after 
that they clamored for the "lung story." And 



PHYSIOLOGY 20S 

I think I taught them most of the Habits of cor- 
rect breathing by that means. 

Through your talks and lessons about the 
eye, the ear, and the nose, you can open the 
way to the discussion of the nervous system, 
and this again, as almost any figure of the 
nervous system will show you, affords ready- 
made materials not only for teaching about the 
nervous system itself, but many miscellaneous 
and interesting things about the nerves. This 
is the place where you can show how the 
strength is conserved, and lay the foundations 
for the kind of self -understanding which pre- 
vents nervous breakdowns. We talk more 
about them and have more nervous troubles in 
America, so far as my observation goes, than 
anywhere else in the world. There is a very 
great deal of absurd talk about the "nervous" 
wear and tear among children, and much there 
is, but it is not due to work and even less due to 
natural defects of ordinary children. But it 
does not take much to break down the nervous 
organization, if it is stupidly dealt with, and 
what is often lacking, is intelligent coopera- 
tion between the subject of it and those who 
have the care and oversight of children. When 
any such smash-up comes in it is at once at- 
tributed to overwork, which is usually not the 
case at all. The amount of hard labor even 



204 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

little children can endure is surprising. This 
does not, of course, apply to defective children 
or children with some organic difficulty. But 
in any case, by this instruction you can make 
your child almost immune from nervous 
troubles by giving it intelligent instruction as 
to how the nervous system works, and teaching 
it to recognize symptoms when they occur. 

Here again you will be told that a child 
should not be made to think about these things. 
But my reply is, that it will meet them at every 
turn, in nervous people, or people who think 
they are nervous, and should be made to look 
critically on these things, and note its own re- 
sources and expenditures in an elementary 
way. This is the method by which you can 
train a child to school itself for emergencies, 
A good portion of life is made up of meeting 
emergencies. I mean physical emergencies. 
The child should be trained to meet them. If 
it knows the digestive arrangements even in a 
simple way, if it knows how fatigue comes 
about, if it knows how recuperation is secured, 
if it knows how to wait and watch instead of 
worrying and weeping, some of the most im- 
portant lessons in life have been learned. This 
is the time to do it. You can teach all these les- 
sons as you discuss the organs of the body, their 
functions and habits, and what influences 



PHYSIOLOGY 205 

them, and what their dangers are. It is aston- 
ishing how much an intelligent child thus in- 
structed can help its own convalescence in 
times when sickness comes. Any hospital su- 
perintendent will tell you that the training of 
the child in this way makes all the difference be- 
tween a speedy and satisfactory recovery of a 
sick child, and the slow, unsatisfactory advance 
of one not so trained. It may mean Hfe or 
death ! 

Simple, but not unscientific on that ac- 
count, aids for injury can be taught at such 
times. The use of antiseptics and their effects 
can be made second nature, a thing which a 
good many doctors have not yet learned. In 
fact, you can through this study train your 
child so that its entire attitude toward medi- 
cal science and medical practice will be directed 
by it, and what is of the greatest impor- 
tance of all, you can make it absolutely im- 
mune to the quack appeals of one kind and 
another with which the whole land is filled. If 
you accomplish nothing more than this, it is 
worth while. But you will do more, because 
you will lead it to self-understanding and 
by and by to a correct interpretation of its 
own symptoms, so that any difficulty which 
does come, in spite of care and preventive ef- 
fort, is diagnosed, and thus the restoration may 



206 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

be very much more speedy and satisfactory. 
Do not let yourself think this is beyond a young 
child. The only thing that makes you think 
so is, that we have all hitherto neglected it. 
There are whole chapters of medical knowl- 
edge which can be thus taught and should be 
taught. Quackery thrives on ignorance. If 
you make the soil, the disease will surely grow. 
What you have thus done about nerves you 
may do about hones and muscles. The order 
does not matter much. Take the thing which 
comes first in a natural way, but if you can 
get a small skeleton of any animal you have 
your work cut out for you. Sometimes there 
is a museum at hand, which may be visited, 
and the specimens studied. Learn the names 
of some of the more important bones, and 
names of all the classes of hones. They will 
be useful in your study of English and Latin. 
Take every term you use, first of all as a word, 
and get all the information you can out of it 
that way, before you go into its special and 
limited use in this science or any science. 
Your lesson always begins with word study, 
no matter what your subject is. Hence, your 
dictionary is always at hand. You can take 
the turkey or the chicken you have had for din- 
ner, and have the bones carefully cleansed, and 
then put them together, which is a very in- 



PHYSIOLOGY 207 

teresting exercise. You can do the same with 
a rabbit or any other small animal. 

A skull is a most interesting object, and one 
the handling of which will have some sugges- 
tive results. Its use in symbolism and litera- 
ture may make it one of the most interesting 
objects imaginable, strange as that seems at 
first sight. In fact, this is true of the skele- 
ton generally. You only need to let a child 
see how the ribs are fastened to the spinal col- 
umn, and get a good notion of how the human 
frame is put together, to find yourself flooded 
with all kinds of questions which it will tax all 
your skill and ingenuity to answer. And you 
must link all this with concrete things. When 
you hear food values talked about in domestic 
science lectures, and the like, immediately ap- 
ply that knowledge through this study, and 
thus make the common foods tell their story 
in scientific terms. Too academic and remote, 
I hear somebody say? Well, take up your 
newspaper or magazine of only recent date, 
and see it discussed with reference to Ger- 
many's food supply, and you will see what I 
mean. No knowledge is alien to you. Be- 
cause it is yours, it is also the natural posses- 
sion of your child! 

While you are on the subject you may take 
along other very practical matters which have 



208 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

scientific import. Let us say you are discuss- 
ing the heart. Here again the literary impli- 
cations of your subject will furnish the ma- 
terial for preparation for teaching. Glance 
through your Bible and your "Famihar Quo- 
tations" for passages about the heart. Now, 
of course, you know that when the Bible uses 
the word heart it does not mean the physiologi- 
cal organ, because it was not known as we 
know it, and there was nothing known about 
the circulation of the blood, and the only les- 
sons to be derived are moral lessons. But 
nevertheless, the central importance of the ac- 
tion of the heart gives you your material. 
But you can teach such things as the action 
of the pulse,, and the circulation of the blood 
and blood pressure^ and a host of other things 
which will explain descriptions which will oc- 
cur in classical literature, when the modern sci- 
entific knowledge was not in existence. A 
clinical thermometer will teach a good many 
things, and a clinical chart will help. This 
also will aid in bringing to the front all sorts 
of questions which it will be your privilege, if 
you do not already know, to find out and im- 
part. Do not fear, the questions will come, 
and the only issue is whether you will have the 
material. The same is true about the lungs. 



PHYSIOLOGY 209 

and if you can get a pair, either a human lung 
or that of some animal, and blow it up and 
show how it works, so much the better. 

By these lessons you are showing how the 
organs of the vertebrates and mammals gener- 
ally work analogously, and you will more and 
more ally the thought of the human body with 
the physical structure of animals generally, 
and when it comes to biological matters, espe- 
cially sex and reproduction, you have come by 
a road which makes the approach not personal, 
but scientific, impersonal and natural. A 
writer on this subject says that "the questions 
of the child should be answered frankly, meet- 
ing the intellectual needs of the child just so 
far as they are felt ; the information about re- 
production should not be abstract generaliza- 
tions, but should be related to the child — as his 
chickens, his kittens, babies of his o^vn ac- 
quaintance. Broad generalizations are not 
usually necessary. If this period is properly 
dealt with, much of the vicious information 
may be anticipated and rendered less harmful. 
A sense of partnership with his parents in this 
knowledge is valuable. The average child 
learns more during these years (from four to 
seven) than at any other period of equal length 
in his life. Much will be gained if the sex 



210 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

facts can take their place normally and with- 
out shock in this growing knowledge." ^ 

Here the mother should be the teacher mani- 
festly. And because this period is so full of 
power, because so much is acquired in it, you 
can readily imagine why it is necessary to get 
this important kind of knowledge so mixed 
with other kinds of knowledge that its imper- 
sonal and scientific character will operate to 
take this special matter out of the field of self- 
consciousness:, through which much of the 
trouble usually comes. Do not let it get spe- 
cialized in a way which separates it from other 
knowledge. Keep it in the region where you 
can readily match any personal allusions by 
illustrations from some other field, and for this 
purpose your botany and zoology will prove 
very helpful. This same author repeatedly 
urges, what I have said so frequently through- 
out this volume, that you must he sure not to 
use nicknames or vulgar terms, hut scientific 
ones J which keep the matter in the region of 
intellectual acquisition. The literary treat- 
ment of the subject will supply all the neces- 
sities for adorning and embroidering the 
theme. 

The habits of other mammalia, like calves or 
kittens, feeding, will supply many suggestions 

^Biology of Sex^ Galloway, p. 72. 



PHYSIOLOGY 211 

for the relation of the child to the mother, and 
from these the more intimate relation can 
easily be suggested. Plants also, and more es- 
pecially, will suggest the reproductive relation 
and the transition in thought from one to the 
other, it has been observed, is not difficult. 
All such teaching should habitually he linked 
with moral instruction of some sort, and this 
followed speedily with some sort of moral eoo- 
action, a specific duty of some hind, as filial 
duty and obedience and obligation resting on 
nurture and care. 

Experiments with very little children, ba- 
bies, in fact, in this field, will be a very inter- 
esting and helpful preparation for your later 
work, because you will see some relations made 
clear which are not so apparent later on. In 
these you will discover the relation of the hu- 
man animal to his remote ancestors. Every- 
body knows the power of a baby's clutch. 
That surely is a reminiscence of an earlier 
stage of development. The same thing is true 
of its wriggling toes. You can watch the 
change in the difference between the size of 
the baby's nose when born, and its jaw, and 
how differently they look a little later on. I 
found it a most amusing experiment to let my 
little children play with colored yarn balls, and 
note their predilections for one color or an- 



212 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

other. Over the crib of one of my children 
when a baby, I placed a mirror in which it 
could view itself at full length, and thus I ob- 
served the child's discovery of its various parts 
from the waving of hands and the wriggling 
of toes and legs. Sometimes I placed a light 
by the side of the crib, and directed the gaze of 
the baby at the shadows of itself and its hands, 
and once I produced an electric effect, when 
the baby, crying naughtily, desiring to be 
taken up when it ought to have been going to 
sleep, as I surprised it into seeing itself as it 
looked in the mirror, while thus crying! 
Never was amazement and chagrin more abso- 
lutely pictured, and we had a great deal of fun 
out of it. These and many such experiments 
which will only occur to you, while the baby 
is in its bath, in which, it will often show that 
it has come out of a fluid medium and has a 
history, which involves swimming, a long dis- 
tance back in the story of the evolution of the 
race. Indeed a well known athletic instructor 
says that if a new born baby is put into a 
proper liquid medium it will swim. I never 
tried this, but I have often been struck with 
the resemblance between a swimming small 
boy and a tadpole ! 

All these things, as you come later to deal 
with the human body, will give you the sense 



PHYSIOLOGY 213 

of the relation of man to the rest of animal 
creation, and will point out the natural way of 
doing things which we in our artificial way of 
living have obscured, much to our hurt. By 
this means, too, you will discover early tend- 
encies, which, observed and provided for, will 
explain many things which mystify us about 
our children. In your careful observance of 
these antics in the baby you will make for your- 
self the materials for teaching him later on, 
using illustrations out of his own Hfe. You 
will often, too, be led to make practical choices 
of great moment. Thus the best penmanship 
among my children is that of the one who is 
left-handed. She writes most beautifully, and 
her college note-books have a sort of copper- 
plate beauty by their regularity, neatness and 
the beautiful formation of the letters. We 
tried of course to cause her to write with her 
right hand. I myself was taught to write with 
both and used to write equally well with both. 
The mother showed the same left-handed tend- 
ency as a child, and was compelled to write 
with her right and thus utterly spoiled her pen- 
manship. The httle girl, as a small child, was 
compelled at fkst to write with the right, but 
it was observed that the moment attention was 
withdrawn she switched quickly to the left. 
We finally decided to let her use the left, with 



214 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

the result above noted. Now, as I view it, it 
would have been nothing short of abuse to pre- 
vent that natural development which has re- 
sulted so happily. And I cannot see that it 
has caused much inconvenience. There are 
many such things which you will note which, 
when you come to teach the subject itself, your 
observation and experience will turn to great 
practical account. 

The same thing is true when you come to 
deal with the voice and the larynx and the vocal 
chords by which speech is produced. Your 
butcher will get you the larynx of a sheep eas- 
ily enough, and with that working model you 
can show how the various parts cooperate and 
how sound is produced. This leads me to 
say something about the voice. Most peo- 
ple never learn how to use their voices, and the 
result is that we have the harsh American voice, 
which is noted the world over for this quality. 
Now this is not necessary. There are differ- 
ences in quality of voices, of course, but a 
pleasant speaking voice is within the reach of 
all who are not deformed. Your own example 
and practice in this matter will go a long way 
toward making the practice of the child. But 
you can also make the child conscious, very 
early, of the differences between the various 
voices it has to hear for their qualities of harsh- 



PHYSIOLOGY 215 

ness, dissonance or pleasantness, and the ob- 
ject lesson will have very great weight. This 
matter cannot he emphasized too strongly. 
The tone used ordinarily indicates the emo- 
tion which causes it and is behind it. You can 
get very thorough control over the mental op- 
erations of the child by the voice, and help 
it to this same kind of control by directing its 
own attention to them. You have doubtless 
noticed that even small babies notice the differ- 
ences of tone employed long before they know 
speech. That same influence acquires accel- 
erating power. If you lose the distinctions of 
tone by failing to use your voice properly, es- 
pecially by using it too much, you lose a most 
valuable instrument for intellectual growth. 

You will remember this when you are read- 
ing aloud, or when your child is uttering words 
of different languages ; you will note it at play, 
and you will especially note it in the ordinary 
routine of the home. There is nothing so sat- 
isfactory in the home as a pleasant-voiced per- 
son. There are moral implications here, too, 
which should not be overlooked. Have you 
ever noticed the difference between a command 
bawled out in a rage, and one quietly delivered 
in even steady tones? Have you ever noticed 
how you can lower the tone in a roomful of 
people often by simply lowering the voice? 



216 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

Have you ever noticed how decisive a change 
came over the tone of a roomful of people 
when certain persons stopped talking? Have 
you ever noticed how surely the tones of cer- 
tain other voices made themselves heard, no 
matter how many other persons happened to be 
talking? Just go into this subject a little on 
your own account. And while you are study- 
ing about the throat, the larnyx, and the vocal 
chords deal with the things they result in, and 
what it signifies. 

There is a spiritual phase of this study, 
which I cannot leave the subject without at 
least mentioning, though I have fully discussed 
the subject in another work.^ The Christian 
religion met the licentiousness and the physical 
as well as moral degradation of heathenism 
with the assertion that the body was "the tem- 
ple of the Holy Ghost." In our day we are 
urging that the body shall be studied and cared 
for in the interest of social salvation and health. 
Whether the economic or prudential motive 
will be strong enough to get these things for us, 
through education, seems to be open to grave 
doubt. My own judgment is that we shall 
have to come back to the Hebrew idea of mak- 
ing it a matter of religion. By them almost 
every bodily function was regulated by reli- 

^ Christianity and the Social JRage, p. 269. 



PHYSIOLOGY 217 

gious law. That made the Hebrew race a 
marked group in the social history of mankind, 
and the study of the human body, whatever its 
physical origin may have been, which is to be 
effective in the regeneration of the race, must 
consider it from the spiritual standpoint, and 
from this standpoint I bid you to begin with 
your children. As I have remarked, "One 
thing is very certain, and that is, that if a 
modern city block were subjected to the severe 
regimen of the Hebrew codes, seven-tenths of 
the troubles in them would disappear. Not 
only did the Hebrews legislate for the relation 
of the sexes, the relations of parents and chil- 
dren, of special groups to each other, but in a 
thousand ways, too minute for detailed descrip- 
tion here, made their religion govern almost 
their very breath that its adherents took into 
their lungs. Ablutions, dress, food, sexual re- 
lations, childbirth, dietary, and almost every 
other form of what we should now regard as 
the special field of medical supervision, were 
not only controlled, but highly organized — so 
highly that it remains a wonderful thing to this 
day, and many of its precepts, as already 
stated, have the sanction of expert medical au- 
thorities. Religion and medicine were one, 
not so much through the practise of medicine, 
as through sanitary regulation which made the 



218 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

religion of the devotee his physical salva- 
tion." 

Take up, therefore, this particular branch 
of knowledge, in a specially humble and devo- 
tional frame of mind. You are dealing with 
the most wonderful piece of mechanism in the 
world, the crown of nature, and the most su- 
perb exhibition of creative skill which the uni- 
verse contains. Not a fragment of it but is 
worthy of your most minute and careful inves- 
tigation, not merely because it is an intellec- 
tual problem of the first magnitude, but, even 
more, because you are indoctrinating your 
child into the residence of his temple of the 
Holy Ghost. In this house he is to live and 
move and have his being. Here he may make 
for himself a mere warehouse, a sty or a shrine. 
Given himself under the holiest association 
known to mankind, and given for nurture, cul- 
ture and immortality, let him early feel 
through your instruction that his every part 
is sacred to some high and holy use. That for 
him the great composers have made the most 
entrancing appeals to his ears, the noblest art- 
ists to his eyes, the most gifted minds to his 
thought, and that he may make the highest use 
of all these gifts, he must master the best use 
of every one of them. This will lift this whole 
subject out of the region of the commonplace. 



PHYSIOLOGY 219 

supposing that it could ever fall so low, and 
make it the study of what it really is — life it- 
self — ^pure, holy, and endless. 



CHAPTER IX 

BOTANY 

Perhaps the best way in which I can intro- 
duce the manner of bringing the subject of 
botany to the attention of children, in a scien- 
tific way, is to quote from a master of the sub- 
ject, Mr. Grant Allen: "Plants are living 
things; they eat with their leaves, and drink 
with their rootlets. They take up carbon 
from the air, and water from the soil, and 
huild the materials so derived into their own 
bodies. Plants also marry and are given in 
marriage. They have often two sexes, male 
and female. Each seed is thus the product of 
a separate father and mother. Plants are of 
many hinds, and we must inquire by and by 
how they came to be so. Plants live on sea 
and land, and have varieties specially fitted for 
almost every situation. Plants have very 
varied ways of securing the fertilization of 
their flowers and look after the future of their 
young like good parents that they are, in many 
different manners. Plants are higher and 
lower, exactly like animals." ^ 

1 Story of the Plants, p. 13. 

220 



BOTANY 221 

There you have already a comprehensive 
program outlined in terms which almost any 
child can understand. You have, in this de- 
scription, a "humanized" outline of the various 
processes which you will inquire into, and into 
each you can go almost as far as you please. 
For your purposes, however, you will not go 
much farther than the merest outlines and let 
the! interest you develop, point out how much 
farther you are able to go. Some children 
when they become interested in some special 
branch of any subject want to pursue it much 
farther than others. You will be guided in 
this matter entirely by the interest you create. 
But as an initial step you will take up these 
various points, and deal with them as best you 
may, and let the work itself point out whether 
you have struck a special lead or not. 

First you would be wise to get some ele- 
mentary text book in botany and soak your- 
self on the subject. There are many such 
books and they all, in the elements, go over 
substantially the same ground though some are 
clearer than others, and you must be guided 
in this matter by your own surroundings. But 
let this be clear from the beginning, namely, 
that you need not go far from your own home 
to have all the material which you need, and 
what you are doing here, again, let me remind 



222 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

you, is not to merely teach the child to recog- 
nize the common plants and flowers of the 
vicinity but to inculcate an intellectual method 
of inquiry and scrutiny which is the essence of 
scientific study. First make it clear to your- 
self that all the natural processes with which 
you are acquainted in human beings as Mr. 
Allen indicates, exist in plant life also. This 
will link it with your study of the human body 
and make your biological parallels very effec- 
tive. Plants are living things. All Hfe is 
derived from them, and they were before ani- 
mal life, which, without them, never could have 
existed upon the earth. They have nutritive 
processes and habits just like human beings, 
and have to earn their food like them and make 
arrangements that their food supply is not 
stopped. Sometimes they seem to change 
their very nature, because the conditions under 
which they find themselves require it in order 
to live. In this they are again like human 
beings and almost all animals. Then they 
have their offspring, their children, whom they 
have to beget and nurture and provide for. 
All this you will assimilate yourself and as you 
take up this study, step by step, you will have 
already begotten a kind of affinity between 
yourself and your child's mind for the wonder- 
ful plant creation. 



BOTANY 223 

Much of the study of plants fails to get any- 
where because the study is linked merely to 
ideas of the beautiful, and the emphasis is laid 
on the pleasure of seeing the beauty and the 
blossoms. That is not your object, though 
you will appreciate the beauty as much as any- 
one. Your business is to get into the life of 
the plants from their own standpoint. You 
are to open a volume of nature at work and 
you will simply follow it as it works and be 
guided by it rather than guiding it yourself. 
For this purpose you will not always make up 
your mind what you are going to find. Very 
likely you will find something you are not 
looking for yourself. Every such "original dis- 
covery by the child, itself, is of great impor- 
tance because it brings the child face to face 
with a law of nature which goes on silently, 
inevitably, all the time and for which man 
has made no provision, and which man did not 
have anything to do with, in the making. 
You will often be struck with the additions to 
your own teaching which the child will make. 
I recall a small child, which was being taught 
along this line and had been given a bean to 
plant in wet sawdust and when it had swelled 
and was about to throw off the outer skin, the 
teacher remarked, "You see, the bean has now 
outgrown its little coat and is going to throw 



224 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

it away just as your mother does when you 
outgrow your coat!" Quick as a JSash, the 
maiden rephed, "Oh no, she does not throw it 
away, she makes it over for my Httle sister!" 
which was not only a beautiful illustration of 
economy, but was, in fact, scientifically exact. 
Nature throws nothing away. She never 
wastes. And what she discards in one form 
she utilizes in another. You will have many 
such pleasant episodes. 

Having prepared yourself, so that you 
know where you are to begin, you will provide 
yourself with pictures of 'plants^ if possible, 
those which you are going to study more 
minutely, and let them be very thoroughly 
known and recognized. In your walks you 
will gather many of the commonest and iden- 
tify them in the most general way. This is 
merely to get the habit of looking about, seeing 
unusual things and finding the habitat of cer- 
tain flowers and plants. You will readily find 
that some are always found in certain places, 
some on high ground, some in marshy places, 
some by the roadside and some by the river- 
side. That is all practical information. You 
will also notice their size and texture. Some 
are strong and sturdy, others are slender and 
light. You will notice color and the lack of it. 
You will notice resemblances and dissimilari- 



BOTANY 225 

ties. You will notice form, height from the 
ground, and manner of behavior under various 
conditions. All this is perfectly simple and 
but preliminary. 

Then you will get a microscope^ or a good 
magnifying glass, so that things not visible to 
the naked eye can plainly be seen. This will 
be your constant companion, because it will 
instantly reveal many things which, without it, 
you would hardly suspect, much less know. 
If you can keep a little place in the Summer 
time or a little box in the Winter, though you 
would be wiser to match your study to the sea- 
sons, where you can plant things and watch 
them grow, so much the better. This same 
microscope will serve you when you study zo- 
ology and the little insects which you will want 
to know about. In any case, remember you 
are to proceed with the little student as though 
for the first time you were finding out how 
these plants came into the world and why they 
stay here and what plans they make for keep- 
ing themselves here. 

What makes this study so important is that 
here you are at the sources of life — for plants 
alone know how to make the materials of life. 
Animals could not exist without them, and 
could not have come into the world, if plant 
life had not prepared the way for them. So 



226 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

that as you watch the elements of plant life de- 
velop, you are close to the sources of all life. 
Everything living of which we know anything, 
came from this source which itself makes living 
matter out of material found in the air under 
the influence of the heat of the sun. When 
the Psalmist therefore says that our life is but 
a "vapor," he is stating something which has 
almost scientific exactitude. You will find 
that a few such generahzations made clear to 
your own mind, will help you very much in in- 
teresting the children, especially if you keep 
the human resemblances clear step by step. 
Eating and drinking, growing and changing, 
mating and reproducing, settling down and 
moving front place to place, all these can be 
reduced to definite reasons which can easily be 
made clear. And when you find a plant in an 
unexpected place, you will immediately ask 
what happened to it, that it had to move from 
its original home, and you will thus be led into 
another field of knowledge, geology. 

The science of biology is the study of living 
matter and living matter alone has the capac- 
ity for change and reproduction. This differ- 
entiates it from dead matter. There are two 
kinds of living matter, plants and animals. 
The plants are the producers, the animals are 
the consumers. You will sometimes find that 



BOTANY 227 

the plants make reprisals on the animals, as 
when they cannot find their materials in the air 
they catch some form of animal matter and 
feed on that. That is the explanation of the 
plants that catch flies and insects, for their own 
nourishment. The habits of plants are very 
interesting, and form a very useful way of cre- 
ating interest in the subject. Sometimes they 
change a stem into a leaf, for necessary reasons, 
and sometimes they assume forms for their 
protection, as in the case of the spines of the 
cactus. Some again are strong enough to 
maintain themselves without help, while others 
have to have help and cling to something. 
You will always find that the plant adapts it- 
self to its conditions, and when it cannot find 
conditions natural to it and cannot alter the 
conditions, it alters itself. Thus you have the 
two laws of adaptation and variation illus- 
trated. 

These are some of the fundamental things 
which you will have in mind, and which you 
will be constantly referring to, because they 
are a part of the great natural system under 
which nature works, and has her purposes car- 
ried out. They reappear in almost every 
form of the study of living things, and when 
once the child gets the idea of the same law 
working in different forms, in the various 



TEACHING IN THE HOME 

fields of nature study, whether plants or ani- 
mals, including the human animal, you have 
taught some of the fundamental lessons of sci- 
ence. The earlier these are mastered, the 
earlier will the reasoning habits be strength- 
ened, and sound habits of thinking developed. 
In the study of botany, the intrinsic interest of 
the materials themselves, added to their place 
in the common ordinary life of children, makes 
progress very rapid and also develops the abil- 
ity to rationalize about things which are not so 
common. 

One very important point not to be over- 
looked, is that you must let the child do as 
much of the work itself as it is capable of 
doing. Let it point out and count the various 
parts. Let it note the differences as they ap- 
pear. Let it make the comparisons and let it 
work out the why and wherefore, you supply- 
ing the leading questions, and making the sug- 
gestions when necessary. Here also is a good 
place to begin drawing. Of course, the draw- 
ings will be crude, but do not let that bother 
you. If you could see some of the drawings 
in freshman laboratory books you would never 
feel discouraged about anything that little 
children do in this direction. But as you will 
be doing this not only in your study of botany, 
but also in zoology and geology, you will be 



BOTANY 229 

getting habits of observation and practice, 
which will do in a very much more useful form, 
what is usually done aimlessly and without any 
end in view. Sometimes too, children will de- 
velop unusual skill in this way, which, of 
course, when it is the case, indicates another 
talent which should carefully be conserved. 
Therefore keep blocks of blank paper around, 
and pencils that make a distinctly black mark 
and, when possible, let the completed plants 
and parts of plants be colored. This form of 
activity can easily be made "busy work" for 
the employment of odd times. Dull and 
stormy days can through this means often be 
made most profitable and happy days. 

When possible, get complete plants, that is 
dig them up carefully and press them or exam- 
ine them entire, first try to classify them, your 
text book will be of use here, and then take up 
the various parts of its structure. Dont at- 
tempt too much and do the same thing over 
many times, the practice is quite as important 
as the results. By this means you get manual 
dexterity in handling delicate things and care 
in separating them and preserving them. 
When you go walking, a little tin box, large 
enough to put an entire plant into without in- 
juring its parts, slung over the shoulder, is 
very useful. If you can get one with three 



230 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

compartments you can put insects into one, 
plants into another, and minerals into another, 
and so all your scientific studies will go hand 
in hand. 

Learn to cut up a plant carefully in various 
ways so that you can get a view of its interior 
structure and can note how it is put together. 
The mounting of these parts in plants that are 
large enough, and you will select such at first, 
because most easily handled, will also afford 
pleasant and profitable work. Keep the child 
at work and though you can do it much better 
yourself let the child do it. It is well to keep 
all such efforts from the very earliest. They 
will make the material for comparison with 
later productions, and also indicate the meas- 
ure of progress. Whenever you use a com- 
mon flower or plant, always refer to it by its 
scientific name. You will remember I said 
that this will help you in language study, and 
these names all have a history. The reason 
most of them are in Latin is, that it was and is 
the language of the learned world and is read 
all over the world which would not be the case 
with any other. 

Common garden vegetables offer a reward- 
ing field for experimentation, radishes, carrots 
and the like. You can study them at every 
stage of their growth and note the various 



BOTANY 2S1 

parts. The drawing of their interior struc- 
ture too, is simple and attractive work. Use 
your garden for everything you have learned. 
Make frequent reviews of the things which you 
have worked out and see that they are recog- 
nized whenever there is an occasion for their 
recognition. Show the functions of the struc- 
ture clearly and simply; what leaves do, what 
stems do, what roots do, and how they do their 
work. Get all these easily discernible things 
well understood before you take up fertiliza- 
tion, though no definite place can be made 
where you shall begin or end. Your purpose 
being to fertilize, yourself, you will cause many 
things to be planted in the child mind, only 
you will guard as best you may, against giving 
mere confused masses of information. It is 
not how much you teach but how much you 
make absolutely clear that is^ your object. 
When the mind is clear, acquisition comes rap- 
idly enough. 

You can make the subject one of pleasur- 
able interest by means of seedlings, using for 
this purpose the ordinary bean, pea, sunflower 
and the like which you can sow in sand or moist 
sawdust, and as? they develop, you can watch 
them and compare them. Notice everything 
about them and see that you do by making 
drawings of them, that is, letting the child 



232 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

make the drawings. Your text book will give 
you most of the practical directions, but what 
I am calling attention to, is, that the processes 
are carefully noted and compared. Ap- 
paratus of a simple sort can easily be devised 
and most of the simple practical experiments 
for your purpose can be made without much 
difficulty. You can take the various grains 
and examine them after they are sprouted in 
this same way. Seeds of melons, squash or 
cucumbers, will add to the interest because 
these are common every day things about 
which any child will know the final end. 
Write to the Department of Agriculture at 
Washington and have them send you a list of 
their publications, and look them over and out 
of them you will get all sorts of material for 
experimentation. Seed catalogues and flower 
catalogues will also give you useful material 
not specially for botanical study, as such, but 
as showing pictures which stimulate the imagi- 
nation and give you the common equivalents 
for the scientific names which you will habit- 
ually use. Just remember that everything is 
grist for your mill and that you are to get in- 
formation from, every source and work it 
through your own mind for the purpose of giv^ 
ing it scientific form and shape for the child. 
Try out every sort of thing that has any prom- 



BOTANY 2SS 

ise in it. But always bring whatever you be- 
gin to a full complete ending, that is, do not let 
things hang at loose ends. Finish what you 
set out to accomplish. Thus if you begin with 
a geranium just get everything out of it that it 
is possible for you to get, and while all that you 
get won't be all of it, nevertheless you will have 
for that particular plant a more or less com- 
plete set of ideas. Do this with a plant of 
each group, getting this way variety. 

The most fascinating portion of the study 
of plants is that of fertilization, that is, the 
marriage of plants. Make it clear that the 
flowers are the mates of plant marriage, some- 
times husbands, sometimes wives, sometimes 
both. Sometimes, in the lower forms these 
processes are not very clear, and in some 
plants, a single part, if it is placed in wet soil 
begins at once to grow into a new individual 
plant. There are many forms of this process 
and your business will be only to deal with the 
simplest at first. Make it clear however that 
the flower of any plant exists only for the pur- 
pose of reproduction and that all its parts, and 
its form, and its color, all have some part in se- 
curing this necessary work. You will show 
what the stamens are and what the pistils are 
and what pollen is and how all these work to- 
gether and you will watch some flowers go 



2S4 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

through their regular work, or see them in pic- 
tures in their different stages, to see just what 
occurs. The stamens and the pistils are the 
true flowers, because upon these depends the 
work of reproducing and the petals are merely 
the envelope in which these are placed. These 
petals by their color attract insects which help 
in the fertilization and their coloring is usually 
for this purpose. They are simply an an- 
nouncement to the insect world, that this is a 
good place to get honey, which is the sweet 
sticky substance in the flower, and by coming 
to them the insects carry the fertilizing pollen 
from one plant to another and thus aid the 
work of keeping the species alive. 

But there is a different purpose here, too, 
which is one of very great interest. By this 
means different plants are crossed and thus 
you get healthy specimens, which is exactly 
what happens when different members of the 
human family mate with other family stems 
than their own, and so preserve a healthy 
strong stock. What human beings do by pur- 
pose and plan, the plants do naturally to keep 
themselves alive and see to it that they have 
strong healthy children. The higher the 
plants are in their order, the more necessary 
this process is. Just as with human beings. 

This usage of the insects is a very interest- 



BOTANY 2S5 

ing thing to watch, because it shows how the 
plants marry. You will often see a bee com- 
ing out of a flower into which he has poked 
himself, quite covered with pollen. Well, he 
will go into another flower and he will rub that 
pollen off at the right spot and fertilize the 
plant to which he goes hy putting the pollen 
on the sticky stigma of the flower to which he 
goes. That keeps it there and prevents him 
from carrying it further. And so the mar- 
riage takes place. The plants did not do all 
this at first, but began in a much more humble 
way. But gradually, they found that they 
could get the insects to come if they put the 
honey in an attractive place, and made the 
petals bright with color, so that they could eas- 
ily be seen afar off, and very soon they estab- 
lished a plan of cooperation with them. The 
plant world is full of such plans, and when 
they result in the marriage of the plants the 
plant is encouraged to do the same thing again. 
By and by, it becomes a family habit. Gen- 
erations of insects trained in this way, know 
exactly where to go and what they will find 
when they get there. 

Sometimes you get curious results which 
neither the plants nor the insects planned for, 
and when this is the case, you find a new kind 
or variation of the plant. All these things 



236 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

you can see very clearly, in common flowers, 
like buttercups or columbines or others quite 
as common. Then again, you will often no- 
tice that the plants have found out that they 
are visited by other than friendly insects, raid- 
ers who simply want to get what they can with- 
out doing anything in return for the honey 
they get. If you will look carefully, you will 
find that they have made provision for these 
raiders into their preserves, and have made 
protective places where they hide their honey 
and only give it up when the proper visitor ar- 
rives. 

Watch the butterflies at work, and see how 
they help in all these plans, getting a good view 
of them before they crawl into the flower, and 
how they look when they come out. Even 
these insects which fertilize make mistakes 
sometimes. They, Hke the rest of us, meddle 
with things that look promising, but which are 
dangerous and they often pay for their experi- 
ments with their lives. I have seen butterflies 
make such mistakes. 

Then again there is another agent, which has 
to do with the perpetuation of plant life and 
that is the wind. Grasses are generally fer- 
tilized in this manner and the catkins which 
you are so glad to welcome in the Spring are of 
this character — that is wind-fertilized. The 



BOTANY 237 

wind does a great many wonderful things and 
it is most interesting to see how the grasses 
hang out their stamens to the wind. It is for 
this reason that they are so numerous and 
cover such vast areas. 

Then again, you will deal with the fruit 
which is simply the effort of the plants to pro- 
vide for their young. It is the seed which is 
the stored food of the plant upon which the 
young child has to live, when first it begins to 
germinate, and that is also the reason why 
these same seeds or fruit are good for us to 
eat, many of them, because they are full of 
nutrition. By these the young plant can live 
for a long time, till it gets to the point where it 
can send out into the soil its own little rootlets 
and agencies for getting its own food. 

By such simple stories, and in this simple 
manner, you will induct the little children into 
the study of what becomes the science of bot- 
any. Use your text book freely yourself but 
do most of your work with the plants them- 
selves, and let the children do all that they 
can in their own way under your guidance. 
When once a careful dissection of a plant 
has been made, let the child make another 
on its own account, and so get the habit 
of noticing pecuharities and things which it 
has not seen before. Often vary your story 



238 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

by going into other phases of the subject, 
by dealing with the very materials out of 
which the plant is formed. For example, 
take the subject of chlorophyll and explain 
what the significance, the perfectly tremend- 
ous significance, of the green coloring of 
the plant world is. That will afford you ma- 
terials for many hours and many reflections 
and discussions about things of never-ending 
interest. 

In the midst of the study of the plants them- 
selves, you can bring home to the child the 
wider implications of the plant world, its rela- 
tions to the animal world, including man, for 
food, and the fact that without it we should all 
die, because we should have nothing to eat and 
that applies not only to us, but to the animals 
which we also eat. Point out that there was 
a time when there were no plants or only the 
very lowest forms which appeared first because 
of the geological condition of the earth, I 
have taken the botany first, because it seemed 
to be the science in which interest is most read- 
ily excited and where the variety of material 
is greatest. But out of all this you can de- 
velop relations of thought with the most mod- 
ern and vital of economic subjects like food 
supply, fertility of the soil, the forestation of 
areas from which the trees have been cut off. 



BOTANY 239 

and the mass of topics which will be found in 
almost any morning newspaper or magazine. 
When the child finds that what it has been 
studying in this simple way is related to the 
big practical questions with which the master 
minds of the world are struggling, its interests 
will automatically expand, and you will often 
discover that it raises questions which did not 
occur even to you. 

Always keep to the habit of asking for rea- 
sons^ the why and the wherefore of everything. 
If you don't know yourself find out. But en- 
courage that habit because it lies at the base of 
the organization of the mind for dealing with 
problems concerning which there are few data 
to begin with. To look about with a new ques- 
tion, and work out some kind of a hypothesis 
concerning it, and then finding out whether it 
is right or wrong, is the best mental training 
that exists. Some things to be sure are fixed 
and you may say that they are to be learned 
outright. But not many, and we are con- 
stantly finding out that many things we sup- 
posed to be fixed are not fixed at all. Study 
physical laws along with all this material. 
The pressure of air, and the velocity of the 
wind, and the fall of rain, and the creation of 
gases, and their effect or modification of living 
life. That will lead you directly into many 



240 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

practical things which concern the daily life of 
the child itself. You can show best by the 
study of plants how much conditions affect re- 
sults and by this method make the child itself 
conscious much of effective life depends upon 
conditions, and show which of these it has in its 
own keeping. Plant life responds so readily 
to all sorts of changed conditions, that it illus- 
trates many ethical as well as natural laws. 
Hardly a tree but shows the effect of some 
outer influence which has been brought to bear 
upon it while growing, and the habits of plants 
in adapting themselves to their conditions may 
well furnish the illustration for the profound- 
est moral lessons with which the human mind 
can deal. 



CHAPTER X 

ZOOLOGY 

The general methods which have been laid 
down in dealing with plants apply also to the 
study of animals with this difference: the 
plants stay put, while the animals move about 
and hence you have to catch your animal in or- 
der to study him. What this means is, that 
animals have organs of locomotion and a gen- 
erally much more highly developed set of or- 
gans including those of motion. There are 
some scientists who believe that the lowest 
forms of animal and plant life either are alike 
or come together and whether this is true or 
not, it is true that at the bottom they are very 
much alike. By the time you get to comparing, 
let us say, a tree with a horse or a cow, you have 
travelled a long distance because the highly 
developed horse has a distinct and special 
set of organs for walking, for digesting, for 
breathing, for circulation, much more highly 
differentiated though the plants have organs 
which perform the same functions. But with 
the animals generally speaking the particular 

241 



242 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

organ does the work of that orgaUj while, in 
plants, the whole plant works at everything 
almost. Then again animals have a nervous 
system and in this they differ entirely from the 
plants. 

These organs, however, are simply an 
evolved form, that is, a higher form of what 
exists in lower animal forms and in plants. 
The animals simply represent a higher stage 
of development. The word zoology means 
the science of animals or discourse about ani- 
mals. You cannot, of course, take up the ear- 
liest forms which require a very careful use of 
the microscope but you can readily begin 
with some of the more general and common 
things which lie all about you. You can, for 
example, study the aphidce on the rose bushes 
or on the fruit trees and see what the ants do 
with them. You can study an ant hill and the 
work of the ants themselves and the form and 
structure of the houses they build and watch 
them at work, a most absorbing and interest- 
ing occupation. You can watch bees at work 
or you can study the work of wasps, or spiders, 
all of which present most thrilling phases of 
this kind of study. 

A very good beginning may be made by tak- 
ing any common insect, a spider or a beetle, for 
choice, and study its parts through a magnify- 



ZOOLOGY 243 

ing glass and taking it apart piece by piece and 
seeing how it is put together and working out 
what all are designed to accomplish. You 
can find a great deal of entertainment, as 
well as information, in noticing carefully 
the structure and form of every organ and 
then asking what it has to do with the 
habits of the animal. You will notice how 
thoroughly every organ is adapted for the 
work which it is designed to do. All this, of 
course, did not come about by accident. It 
took a very long period, just how long nobody 
can say, till each one of these tiny instruments 
became so exactly fitted to do the work for 
which the insect uses it. A common grass- 
hopper lends itself for dissection very nicely 
and the parts are readily separated and ana- 
lyzed. 

You will not have done this many times, be- 
fore you will become aware that the same great 
law which we discovered in plants, is also at 
work here and that the animals have become 
adapted to their surroundings just as the 
plants have been. Sometimes you will see the 
remains of the organs for which the animal 
once had use, but for which it has now none and 
consequently it is disappearing or changing. 
Nature does not waste anything, least of all 
power and strength, and when organs cease to 



244. TEACHING IN THE HOME 

perform any special office, or have any work 
to do, she lets them die and they pass away. 
But often the place where they were shows 
traces of them, and there are said to be many 
such remains in the human body, of the organs 
for which man once had use, but for which he 
has none now. 

You will notice that the differences in these 
respects are those which affect the struggle for 
life most keenly, fingers and toes, tentacles 
and antennce, because when the use of these 
becomes changed, the change has to be made 
quickly. It is just as if you began to go bare- 
foot and very soon your foot would show the 
changed order of things, because you are walk- 
ing all the time and changed habits here would 
be very serious. You can notice this also in 
the hands and fingers of workmen in various 
callings, and see how their work affects their 
hands. All this in animals is very common, 
and has to do with the saving of the animal's 
life. It found that it had to change its habits, 
if it wished to survive, and only those who 
could do this, did actually survive, hence the 
expression the survival of the fittest. Only 
the strongest and the readiest could make the 
changes. It is just so with men. Those who 
can readily meet new conditions, and adapt 
themselves to them, get along when changes 



ZOOLOGY 245 

are necessary. Those who cannot alter their 
habits, or are not strong enough to do pio- 
neering into new conditions, die off. The 
law is the same in both cases. Most of 
our domestic animals had wild ancestors, 
just as man had wild ancestors. We have 
been tamed and they have been tamed. But 
by this taming process, we have also lost 
something, namely, the ability to endure hard- 
ship and fight for life under severe or adverse 
conditions. The foot of a horse, for example, 
has gone through many changes before it came 
to be what it is now. 

Conditions make most animals what they are 
and that is the reason why animals in the cold 
climates have heavy fur and those in milder 
zones have nothing like as heavy coats. The 
climate has much to do with the habits and dis- 
position as, of course, it affects the food and 
much more about animals. The nature of the 
soil and the character of the food supply, all 
have great influence in this direction. You 
will often have noticed how, in hunger, ani- 
mals eat things which they do not usually en- 
joy. If that process were continued long 
enough, the unusual food might easily become 
the habitual food, and the digestive organs 
would gradually become accustomed to it and 
take on a form and method which would pro- 



246 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

vide for it. When you consider the pecuUar 
digestive apparatus of a cow, for example, you 
have only to consider the food and habits and 
purposes of the cow organism, to account for 
most of it. In dissecting insects or small ani- 
mals always look at the various organs, for 
strange and curious things. 

The general principles of zoology can be 
best understood perhaps by taking some single 
specimen and studying it in detail, though for 
little children this is sometimes wearisome, 
yet the study and dissection of a frog^ gives 
endless delight and furnishes all sorts of in- 
formation which has great uses. Frogs be- 
sides are interesting creatures in themselves 
and are easy to get at. You will, of course, 
have by you some good text-book in which 
what you are studying may be looked up, and 
you may be guided yourself, so that you can 
study with the children. Some general in- 
struction as to classification may be given at 
first, though generally it will be found best to 
give it by implication, though the four-fold 
classification of Cuvier is still as useful as any. 
But you can easily indicate the difference be- 
tween vertebrata, the arthropoda, the mollusca, 
and the verm^es and if it is found necessary 
some others. But as you will recall that you 
are not making a zoologist, but merely teach- 



ZOOLOGY 24^ 

ing the child that there is a vast field of knowl- 
edge called zoology, and what it is about, you 
need not at this stage concern yourself about 
the many things which will come when more 
formal study is entered upon. You will, of 
course, strike such a term as 'protozoa and you 
will be wise to find out what it means and per- 
haps at some stage, tell the child about it. It 
is not difficult to define and enough is said 
in the papers and magazines to-day about 
cells and cell-life to make it readily intelli- 
gible. 

It is well, however, to take up the embryol- 
ogy of the various classes of animals and find 
out how they come into the world, and how 
they mate, and what changes they undergo 
from infancy to maturity. In the frog, of 
which I have already spoken, this is a very in- 
teresting process and one easily made intelli- 
gible even to little children. The bii^ds will 
help to make this part of the study interesting 
too, because they can so easily be observed in 
the Spring. But though you will study many 
things about many animals, try, if possible, to 
keep one on the table constantly for further 
study, all the time getting more and more in- 
formation about it, till it has been thoroughly 
worked over. You will not have exhausted it 
even then. But you will have established 



248 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

some of the principles, which is what you are 
after. 

If you happen to be by the sea shore you 
have your work made for you in the study of 
the sea-urchins and shells and crabs and even 
lower forms which you will hunt out and put 
under your miscroscope. Some have consid- 
ered this one of the most fascinating portions 
of the study. I have seen some eminent men 
spend a whole afternoon over a clam and every 
moment of it was wonderful to me. The same 
is true of fishes which can easily be dissected 
and studied by the waterside, either of the sea, 
or lakes, or rivers. If you will make a water 
glasSj that is, a box with a glass bottom, and 
push it down into the water of a pool, your 
face above it shutting out the light from above, 
you will see many wonderful and curious 
things. At some of the Southern sea resorts 
they have boats fitted with glass bottoms by 
which many interesting things under the boat 
can be seen. A httle experimenting here will 
be very rewarding. This also leads me to say 
that the keeping of an aquarium helps in the 
study of fishes and water animals, making ob- 
servation easy and the recording of such obser- 
vations regular. 

Try out all sorts of experiments before set- 
tling down to any theory about anything. If 



ZOOLOGY 249 

you get a live frog, for examjole, put him in a 
tub and watch how he swims, how he eats, how 
he rests, and how he jumps, and notice the dif- 
ference between a frog which is an hour in the 
light and one which is an hour in the dark. If 
you happen to be training a spider, notice what 
attracts him, what frightens him, how far he 
can hear and the like. Put a dead fly where 
he can get at it, or better, a living one so that 
it cannot get away, and watch him strike it 
and kill it. Or, if you happen to be studying 
a worm, put it on a sheet of paper, and watch it 
move, how it moves, what it will do when you 
touch it; examine its various parts and see 
what they do if you touch them. If you hap- 
pen to be studying birds, which you can often 
do very well with an ordinary opera glass, take 
the various organs in detail. I have watched 
a humming bird thus for a long time and got- 
ten a very thorough view of his methods and 
beauty while at work. 

It will add very much if you make collec- 
tions of insects, because by this means you can 
make comparisons more readily and this is 
really a very important part of the work. To 
see, side by side, two animals which are in 
many respects alike and in others quite dis- 
similar is to emphasize their differences and 
this will make it both natural and easy to in- 



250 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

quire what makes the difference and thus make 
a straight road to the habits, food, digestive or- 
gans, and the hke, and make your lesson for 
you whenever you wish to take it up. It will 
also form interesting material for drawing ani- 
mals in whole, or in part, and comparing the 
parts after they are thus drawn. It will also 
make it easy to compare colorings and some of 
the butterflies and dragon-flies are very beauti- 
ful and when examined under a glass disclose 
rare things. Great care should be exercised in 
this part of your task, because delicate parts are 
easily broken and this very delicacy of han- 
dling is itself a kind of training in dexterity 
and skill, which helps in many ways both in 
the writing and in the drawing. But it will 
help in other things too. A child that has 
learned how to handle dehcate insects' wings, 
will handle every other thing with much more 
care and tenderness. Clumsiness will disap- 
pear and every task performed with the hands 
will be enhanced thereby. It will also add 
grace and beauty to the hands themselves. 

This is especially true in handling the 
feathers of birds which suffer from careless 
handUng and lose much of their beauty and al- 
most all of their texture. Always handle a 
bird by the bill, and then you won't break or 
mar anything. Never drag it over any sur- 



ZOOLOGY 251 

face. Some persons have a constitutional 
aversion for snakes. But if you happen to 
find them, especially the small and harmless 
kind, put them in a glass box, find out about 
their food and study their habits. It will give 
some important information, besides being of 
great interest. In fact everything is a part of 
your task because you are making the ac- 
quaintance of the great world of animal crea- 
tion, and by seeing as many portions of it as 
possible, you are laying the foundation for the 
understanding of the laws of the great animal 
world by which they and we are alike gov- 
erned. 

In this same connection you will discover 
that almost every animal has some kind of de- 
fensive weapon, because every animal has its 
own particular enemies against which it has to 
be constantly prepared to fight, if it wishes to 
live. The study of the methods of defense by 
animals is very interesting because some of 
them are aggressive and visible and some of 
them are not visible. Animals that cannot de- 
fend themselves by strength do it by cunning. 
Many animals have what is known as defensive 
coloring for this purpose, by which they so 
identify themselves with their surroundings 
that it is often very hard to see them. Others 
have other ways. You will often be surprised 



252 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

how still an animal, with quick motive power 
can stand till it is sure that it is in danger and 
then dart almost with the quickness of light- 
ning to some place of security. But the study 
of these things furnishes the material for much 
reflection, not only on the life of lower animals, 
but hardly less upon the life and development 
of man. 

The defensive equipment of animals also 
suggests another matter, namely, the parasitic, 
animals which live upon their prey, actually 
making their habitat upon the animals they 
live upon. These are found not only among 
land animals but also among water animals, 
and the study of parasites again leads to some 
interesting conclusions. Parasitism has come 
to have a meaning, not only in the field of nat- 
ural history, but also a deeper and more sig- 
nificant meaning in the affairs of men. Noth- 
ing can convey the hideousness of living with- 
out working or productiveness of some kind to 
young children, than to see the little hce which 
infest the larger animals and realize that their 
entire life is lived upon the bodies of other be- 
ings than themselves. The notion that there 
are parasitic men who live upon others, doing 
nothing for themselves, was a distinct ethical 
shock to some young children I was teaching 
and I think hardly anything I ever did made 



ZOOLOGY 253 

them so anxious to work lest they should in 
their own minds become identified with para- 
sites. 

By contrast, the study of bees makes a fine 
method of inculcating the higher virtues of in- 
dustiy, frugality, forethought, and patience. 
Bees can be watched so easily and the litera- 
ture of the subject is so full and so many de- 
scriptions are accessible, that it is a very simple 
matter to follow them through all their work 
and teach the various principles which they 
are illustrating. Wasps, which though not so 
highly esteemed popularly, are hardly less 
wonderful in the way they go about their work, 
and a most interesting comparison might be 
made between the resemblances and differ- 
ences of the queen wasp and the queen bee. 
Both are very remarkable personages and sin- 
gularly efiicient and important to their kind. 

Perhaps not with the very smallest little 
children, but surely with children of seven or 
eight, you can try the dissection of an animal 
of higher calibre than any of those yet sug- 
gested — let us say a rabbit. What you have 
tried with a frog or a bird, will have in a meas- 
ure given you the courage and experience to 
try something larger and the rabbit is easily 
cut up and the organs taken apart and exam- 
ined. You can do as much or as little as seems 



254 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

wise to you in this matter, and must be gov- 
erned by the interest and disposition of the 
child. Some children love this sort of thing, 
and are never happier than when cutting up 
something and trying to find out what is on 
the inside. There are others that shrink at 
first, and some who never enjoy it, even after 
they have become used to the idea of dissec- 
tion and know its necessity and importance. 
But wherever you find the disposition, push it 
to the utmost and get all the information you 
can. This is your golden time when there are 
no interests competing with you, which you 
cannot readily overthrow or circumvent. 

This is also the time when you will fre- 
quently stimulate your young student's inter- 
est by taking him to the nearby museums and 
showing him all sorts of animals, especially 
those which he has handled and which he will 
observe with a tenfold greater interest because 
he knows something about them through per- 
sonal contact. 

Many cities have also now zoological gar- 
dens with all kinds of animals and frequent 
visits to these, with the equipment of knowl- 
edge which you will give before you go, so that 
the young people will know what they see 
when they look, and what to look for, will help 
in the study of animal life. Of course, all this 



ZOOLOGY 255 



time you will be having a harvest time with 
other things, namely geography, teaching all 
about the lands of the nativity of these ani- 
mals, and all you know about them or can 
gather about them. You will have a perfectly 
joyous time (I did) working out the wonder- 
ful scientific names of the various species and 
classes and families of animals, and enriching 
the vocabulary by great additions of all sorts. 
Remembering what I have already said about 
word-study, just think of what materials 
you have in such words as mammalia, car- 
nivora, paleeontology, zoogeography, morphol- 
ogy, and the hke. My own children used to 
jump at these and their kind, with a snort of 
pleasure which was wonderful to witness, and 
when they had once gotten a firm grip on 
them, they used to hang them about their con- 
versation like garlands, or as a warrior might 
display his spoils of the chase. As, in fact, 
such they were. 

Animal pets can be made to play a large 
part in this study if the pets are made to be 
something besides pets, and are studied as well 
as played with. I remember very well some 
children who knew all about white mice and 
did perfectly wonderful things with them, and 
never understood how intimate and exact their 
knowledge was till I saw students in the medi- 



256 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

cal school, doing the same things with mice 
they were experimenting with in their research 
work. So, also, I have known children who 
displayed positive genius with rabbits, and I 
knew a little girl who had above a hundred ca- 
naries in the attic of her home which she had 
reared herself, and which she almost seemed to 
know by name. In another home, I saw a 
humming bird that had almost been frozen and 
which was found outside of a window, so 
trained that it would come at call and sit on 
the finger of its keeper and which feeding on 
its food of diluted honey was one of the most 
interesting sights I ever witnessed. 

What can be done with birds is well 
known to many people. Children can easily 
be taught comradeship with their pets, in fact, 
take to it naturally, and often these pets will 
endure a good deal from, children whom they 
have learned to trust. I think I have already 
mentioned the story of the incubator chicken 
Tom (the original duet being Tom and 
Jerry, remains of a dozen, all the rest of whom 
perished) and how abominably domesticated 
he became, and what a nuisance it was continu- 
ally to be mistaken into thinking that a baby 
was crying, when it was only Tom cheeping 
and wailing for company! I wouldn't advise 
cultivating house mice but for a number of 



ZOOLOGY ^57 

months I had, in the evening, after the children 
had gone to bed, a good deal of amusement 
calling a mouse with musical instincts out of 
his hole while I played the piano to him. His 
exhibition of positive joy, and his efforts to 
dance, were a source of great delight to me. I 
taught him to modulate his steps pretty well 
for an ordinary mouse, with whom I had only 
a long distance acquaintance, and more than 
once he rolled over in the determination to 
keep up with the fast time I gave him. He 
never loved me enough, however, to let me see 
him at close range and rushed to his hole im- 
mediately after the orgy. He disappeared 
quite suddenly. 

Of course, all these things have no particular 
scientific value, but they open the mind to the 
possibilities and show how wonderful the ani- 
mal world is and what we may yet learn. In 
this connection animal stories may be used 
with good effect and purpose. Stories of the 
great exploits of dogs or horses are always wel- 
come to children and with the scientific mate- 
rial the human elements may be mingled so 
that the whole subject gets a sort of glow 
which is both stimulating and informing. 
You can never know when these little experi- 
ments will give you pleasure. While I am 
writing this, a big spider from outdoors has 



258 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

crawled up on the window sill and hearing the 
click of the typewriter is wondering whether to 
go on or not. By and by, I shall write his his- 
tory! 

The geographical distribution of animals 
can be made a very pleasurable occupation for 
young children, by taking large sheets sep- 
arately, and placing upon them pictures of ani- 
mals and then locating them on the map. 
Sometimes the evolution of a particular species 
can be shown in successive pictures which 
makes an interesting exhibit. Then too, the 
distribution of marine animals can be made 
equally interesting by placing them on the map 
in the various parts of the ocean where they 
may be found. This sort of work is good for 
indoor days and will be found to be valuable 
for many other things than this particular sub- 
ject. It will be found a useful thing too, 
to associate geographically the animals and 
plants of a particular region, and thus get a 
line on groupings of animals and plants and 
see how this is related to climate, soil, food 
and other conditions. There are many such 
devices which can be worked out and you will, 
of course, do this first of all for the region 
where you happen to be. In fact, cultivate 
your own region first in everything, not only 
because it is easier and simpler to do this, but 



ZOOLOGY 259 

because the interest in the things near at hand 
will prove that you do not need to go far from 
home for enjoyment and pleasure. Distance 
will always lend enchantment, so place the em- 
phasis on the things near at hand. 

But this should not prevent your getting 
from the libraries, books of scientific interest 
and exploration. You should go often to the 
library and visit this department and see what 
new books there are and look them over and 
frequently have them by for reference and al- 
ways be selecting materials from them which 
are suited to your purpose. You will be care- 
ful to observe the difference between the books 
which deal with the subject in a more or less 
scientific manner, and those which merely re- 
cord pleasant tales. Be careful not to confuse 
newspajjer stories about animals with scientific 
knowledge. The more faithfully you do the 
work of observation and comparison^ especially 
with a microscope, noting how everything oper- 
ates under law, the less you will be deceived. 

You will see so much evidence of design and 
purpose in the habits of animals, that it will be 
next to impossible for you to avoid raising the 
question of instinct and reason in animals. 
On these points there is much difference of 
opinion and naturally many scientists, espe- 
cially those who have given their lives to close 



260 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and patient study of the habits of animals, be- 
Heve that they reason hke man, only differing 
in degree. It is certain that animals do things 
that look like reasoning, namely, exercise the 
power of choice, show preferences as to color 
and odor, and have their likes and dislikes, just 
like human beings. Then again they show 
contentment and anger, they have feelings and 
seem to have memory. We know that they 
select special foods and flowers, and seem to 
show discrimination often in a high degree. 
Then again, animals show the social spirit 
often in a degree which might well be emulated 
by some men. Those that live in colonies show 
that they know how to get along together, dis- 
tribute their tasks, mind their own business, 
and bear their own burdens. They seem to 
know how to punish promptly and effectively, 
those that disobey the rules and have a high 
sense both of order and discipline. They seem 
to have the sense of direction as in the migra- 
tion of birds, and often exhibit wonderful pow- 
ers in getting back to the nest when they are 
lost. Whether the "instinct is unconscious 
reason," or not, it is a powerful thing. What 
is very certain is, that naturalists who have 
close contact with animals and who observe 
them for years incline more and more to the 
idea that animals have powers like those of 



ZOOLOGY 261 

man though in a lower degree. To be sure 
inherited habits may account for a great deal 
but not for all. The operation of the great 
powerful laws like those of struggle for life, 
reproduction, food, and the like compel very 
astounding things and show how strong these 
laws are. These are the main things to learn 
because their mastery has a no less powerful 
influence upon our own conception of human 
life and work. At any rate, if instinct is the 
sum of inherited habits in animals, we may 
learn a good deal about its influence for our- 
selves of our own habits and look out for them. 
It is hardly possible in study hke this, to 
avoid the question of the relation of man to 
the rest of animal creation. Nor is it neces- 
sary that it should be avoided. The animal 
nature of man is so pronounced, so ever pres- 
ent, and periodically manifesting itself in so 
many ways, that his relation to the animal 
world may well be taken up and general ideas 
about it inculcated. Of course, this is not the 
place, nor is childhood the time, to go into the 
graver questions. But the general resem- 
blances between man and the higher anthro- 
poids may not be overlooked. The differing 
characteristics of the various races of men may 
well be pointed out, and the relation of man to 
his own environment may well be taught while 



262 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

you are showing what happens to animals if 
you change their geographical relations and 
with these, their food, the soil on which they 
live, the climate which affects them, and the 
companionships in which they have to live and 
move and have their being. All this in ani- 
mals in a detached kind of way, is interesting 
enough. It becomes of acute and burning in- 
terest when apphed to ourselves. 

Nor is it without special interest at this pres- 
ent time. Man is being made over by the in- 
ventions which are changing his nature and 
habits. For example, the ease with which we 
are transported by motor cars and other ve- 
hicles from one place to another is making 
walking less and less a habit. How will that 
effect the legs of the future generations ? The 
same is true about our food. What kind of 
teeth will the future generations have with all 
their food prepared for them? What kind of 
stomachs will they have, with the things they 
put into them? What kind of eyes will they 
have, considering the new influences which are 
affecting them? All these things may very 
reasonably be discussed as showing the effect 
of habits, surroundings and natural forces 
upon the life of man. 

But along with this come the questions of 
race amalgamation. The so-called inferior 



ZOOLOGY 263 

races are not disappearing. They are increas- 
ing. They will be in closer contact in the fu- 
ture with the white races than ever before. 
They will learn, are, in fact, learning now, not 
only the strength but also the weaknesses of 
the white races: The troops from India, for 
example, and Africa, must be getting a great 
deal of education about their white brothers in 
the trenches in France at the present moment. 
How will this affect them when they get back 
home and spread abroad the knowledge of 
what they have learned? What will the gen- 
eral attitude of European races be in the fu- 
ture toward the Asiatic races? Will they 
mingle ? And if they mingle in commerce and 
war, will they not mingle in other things too? 
Is not the possibility of these races being 
crossed in sight ? How will that affect civiliza- 
tion? All these are very real things and chil- 
dren now living will have to make some very 
important decisions relative to these questions. 
Moreover the general laws which we have 
looked into, of the struggle for existence, the 
preparations for aggression and defense, the 
measures for the security, and growth of off- 
spring, what is the significance of these things 
in the larger area of man's future? All this 
shows how important it is that there should be 
in the background, a wider knowledge of these 



264 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

processes as they exist in the animal world, and 
as a part of the general laws of life, higher and 
lower alike. We have seen how in the war 
now raging all the higher interests of life have 
become submerged in the brute struggle for 
physical conquest. But into this struggle 
have been brought, for the first time, the high- 
est brain developments, the best resources of 
the intellect, and they have all been laid at the 
feet of the war machines of the fighting na- 
tions. Notice too, while you are about it, how 
the war operating as a new environment is 
changing governments, altering the course of 
political development, breeding new and dif- 
ferent ideals of national life, and the relation 
of the individual to his government and his 
fellow men. Thus we are seeing in the realm 
of man what we have been talking about in the 
changes that take place among the lower ani- 
mals. 

In a similar way, notice how this same war 
is giving the world new ideas of food and the 
amount needful for life. Notice how it is af- 
fecting ideas of economqj and the public control 
of every necessity of the nations. All these, 
when they have done their work, will leave the 
people subjected to them very unlike what 
they have been before these changes were in- 
troduced. From this visible example, you can 



ZOOLOGY 265 

easily work backward to the time when there 
were none of the things which we count so com- 
mon to-day, and man had to get along without 
them and so steadily you get back to the primi- 
tive man, who was so nearly like an animal that 
he was subject almost exactly to the kind of 
laws that we have seen operating upon animal 
life. He lived very like them, for he had no 
houses; he ate the things they did, because he 
knew nothing about cooking; he had the in- 
stincts and the abilities which they had, of 
quick observation, higher sense development, 
to make up for his lack of mental development. 
Hence he could run and jump and swim and 
hear and smell as we cannot, having no need 
for these highly developed powers as he had. 
The story of man's own development on the 
animal side should be taught because it will 
explain many things which if understood and 
recognized will help to greater self-control and 
through this to a higher efficiency and useful- 
ness. 

Not far from the spot where I am writing 
this, there is a house which is more than one 
hundred and fifty years old. It has been in- 
habited by successive generations and as you 
go about it and study the structure as it stands 
to-day, you can see the marks of each genera- 
tion. The architecture has undergone a va- 



266 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

riety of changes, parts have been added here 
and there with little regard to plan, because 
there was no plan. Each generation made it- 
self comfortable and added what it needed, 
with little reference to looks or indeed any- 
thing but its own satisfaction. But this is not 
all. If you go inside, you will see that the very 
timbers have changed. The great timbers 
which were once easily obtainable are not in 
the newer parts. In the older portions, the 
great broad boards in the floors were hewn 
with an adze because there were no saw-mills 
to make them. The newer parts give the evi- 
dence of the existence of machinery, which the 
earlier generations did not even dream about, 
much less use. So, on every side, you see how 
time and circumstances have changed not only 
the internal and external appearance of this 
house but the very stuff of which it is made. 

Thus it has been with man. Thus it has 
been with the world of nature and in animals 
we can see this process taking place in the 
cross-breeding and the development of special 
types. Only a year ago, we were greatly af- 
flicted in this region with brown-tail moths. 
This year there are few, almost none. Why? 
Because the brown-tails mated with another 
kind and produced a degenerate type, which is 
not nearly so harmful and the new worm is 



ZOOLOGY 267 

distinctly less strong and capable and able to 
cause trouble. It therefore fell an easy vic- 
tim to a parasite which took them off by thou- 
sands. The caterpillar nests full of these dead 
hybrids tell the story and such stories are con- 
stantly being enacted, not only among the ani- 
mals, but also among men. Children who are 
made to see these things in operation, will have 
a much more rational conception of hfe, be 
subject to fewer illusions in life and better 
able to cope with the problems with which 
they must grapple when mature life is upon 
them. 



CHAPTER XI 

GEOLOGY 

The study of geology like that of every 
other science, should be begun by a sort of 
orientation in the use of the various terms em- 
ployed. It will be interesting to compare the 
words geology, geography, geometry, and 
other similar words, with a discourse on the 
distinctions involved and the resemblances 
in the kind of knowledge which they connote. 
This can readily be done on some occasion 
when synonyms are studied, or other word 
studies are made, and will themselves form an 
introduction to the subject. 

This study also assumes a few other things 
which very likely you have worked out in the 
study of geography, hke the elements of the 
solar system, the relation of the earth to the 
sun, and the action of the sun upon the earth. 
You have already noticed this and made use 
of it in relation to plants and animals. You 
have talked about the seasons and the changes 
of climate and by this means you will have al- 
ready prepared for the more detailed talks 
about this science. 

268 



GEOLOGY 269 

Geology is eminently an outdoor study, 
though this may be said of all the sciences in 
one way and another. Still because it deals 
mainly with the forces which have made the 
earth what it is, and aims to follow these 
forces to their beginnings, and then follow 
them in their work and variations, under dif- 
fering conditions, you can begin almost any- 
where. We began in the garden, with the 
action of the spray, which after some time be- 
gan to make little streams and wear away cer- 
tain Httle beds and then carry away the soil 
from one spot and deposit it in another. 
From this we pointed out that what was here 
taking place, on a minute scale was really what 
happened in the earth on a large scale, and 
made the vast modifications which could be 
seen anywhere. In fact, we often set the 
water working in various ways in order to 
produce some of these results so that the ac- 
tion could be plainly seen. 

You will probably find it easiest therefore 
to begin the study with observation of the ac- 
tion of water. Rivers, streams, any running 
water, will illustrate some of the more funda- 
mentals, and you will have great pleasures in 
seeing these principles recognized from time 
to time, while you are apparently not doing any 
studying at all. Whenever we went fishing 



270 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

we made the occasion one of studying the ac- 
tion of water. Whenever there was a rain- 
storm we went out into the rain, and especially, 
when there was a heavy rainfall noticed the 
changes which the water had made. We no- 
ticed from Summer to Summer, what changes 
had taken place in the course of familiar 
streams and places where the action of the 
water could be noticed. We took occasion to 
point out in times when the water in the river 
was low, how the changes were being wrought 
out and when there was an overflow from 
freshets above, we noticed the results of that 
also. 

Since so large a part of the earth's surface 
has been made what it is by the action of water, 
and since this action is always the same 
whether it operates on a large or a small scale, 
you have excellent opportunities for observa- 
tion. Also it affords a splendid opportunity 
for making rough drawings and thus leading 
forward into a general study of topography. 
It leads to noticing elevations and depressions, 
and this again leads to measurements of one 
kind and another, by means of which, many 
forms of the most fundamental thing in all 
science can be taught and mastered, namely, 
exact measurement. You can teach the 
tables of measurement in this collateral way, 



GEOLOGY 271 

and the child learn them without ever having 
had to face them formally and indeed often 
without ever remembering when they were 
learned. Thus when you measure the circum- 
ference of a tree, and then figure on its diam- 
eter, on the rate of growth and the like, or as 
you measure the rate at which the water wears 
away the bank of a stream, and many such 
things, inculcate the habit of exact measure- 
ment and teach the method of its performance 
at the same time. 

Then you will deal with the things which 
show the action of water. Pebbles, small 
stones, which have become rounded by the ac- 
tion of water and by rubbing against each 
other, are very interesting in this connection. 
We taught them in connection with the story 
of David and Goliath when it says, that David 
"took five smooth stones from the brook" for 
his sling, and we reconstructed the geological 
action of the water in framing those stones for 
their use in the sling, and the reasons why 
David chose them, and made it an interesting 
conjunction of the alliance between natural and 
moral forces for the achievement of the pur- 
poses of God, You will find many such oc- 
casions. 

Then, again, you will notice and show how 
water is a great carrying agent and what stu- 



272 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

pendous results have come about by this force. 
You can easily show in a glass of water, how 
sedimentation takes place and you can from 
the action of flowing water show what the ac- 
tion of ice is and so lead up to the great gla- 
cial epoch and what that did for the earth. 
You can show how ice can carry great masses 
of stone, and very likely you will not have to 
go very far, to find some boulder that has been 
carried many hundreds of miles from its na- 
tive place, to be where it is. You will show 
how these stones and the smaller ones are grad- 
ually broken up not only by bumping against 
each other, but by the action of the water in 
freezing in the crevices, which finally breaks 
them up and then grinds them into fine parti- 
cles which are thereby more readily trans- 
ported. 

You will also notice the location of the 
stones, especially the larger ones and ask why 
they are where they are, rather than in some 
other place. In fact, you will do just what 
you do with plants. Why is it here rather 
than in some other place? And having asked 
that question, you will set about finding the 
reasons. Then again you will find large 
masses of earth very much mixed in rows or 
mounds and you will ask yourself how that 
came about, and perhaps in a given region 



GEOLOGY 273 

you will be able to follow out the line of such 
deposits. Thus you will find out where cer- 
tain kinds of geological action have ended. 
And you will see what they have left and when 
this process has been repeated several times 
you will have shown how we determine certain 
geological results from these investigations. 

Sometimes you will be going by a road 
where there has been some rather deep ex- 
cavating necessary, for the levelling of the 
road. You will notice the stratification and 
often you will be able to show very distinctly 
the layers in which the deposits have been 
placed where they are. Often you will find 
a special kind of a boulder sticking out, whose 
ancestry you will trace out and tell where it 
came from. This you can very readily do. 
Often you will find the same kind of a boulder 
in different places and have an interesting 
time comparing the differing situations and 
the causes which produced them. 

Then, again, you will notice how sand is 
formed and the different hinds of soil and 
learn what that involves. How soil is 
changed by the infusion of new elements 
brought by the water, and especially by the 
carrying in of new kinds of rock. You can 
readily gather the various kinds of rocks 
found in your vicinity and learn to name them, 



274, TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and get some of their leading characteristics. 
All these things may be carried on coinci- 
dentally with your study of plants and often 
you will find a plant in some cranny which the 
water has caused either by flow or by frost, 
and then deposited soil enough for some tiny 
plant to grow. All this is very elementary, 
perfectly simple, but very fundamental. It 
is surprising how possible it is for people to 
go through the world, and see all these things 
and never exhibit the slightest curiosity about 
them. 

From these simpler forms of the action of 
water you can go on to those of wider scope. 
Mountains and valleys^ the hills and the rivers, 
the lakes and their sides or hanks or shores, are 
all material for much investigation from the 
pebbles on the beach to the great cliffs that 
overhang and awe on the mountain sides. 
Thus you will come to some of the more tre- 
mendous geological forces. You can here 
deal with the theories of the earth's interior, 
the action of fire and heat and you can often 
see how the masses of stone lie on the moun- 
tain side. You can open up the whole subject 
of the earth's crust, and how it was formed 
and what is happening to it all the time. 

You can, at this point, vary the subject by 
taking up some of the great upheavals of his- 



GEOLOGY 275 

tory, the great earthquakes and will find it 
interesting, not merely on the geological side, 
but likewise on the side of history and human 
interests. There have been enough of these, 
even lately, and there are some going on all 
the time apparently, to make it easily possible 
to link this subject with very present day 
affairs. Earthquakes may very easily make 
your point of departure for teaching not only 
a great deal about the earth, and its surface, 
and its interior, and its changes, but hardly 
less of its effects upon mankind and civiliza- 
tion and the like. Make everything tdl 
and pictorialize everything. Pictures of such 
scenes are easily accessible, and show, not only 
the powerful forces at work, but also the fear- 
ful effects which they leave upon the land- 
scape and upon the people who come under 
their terrible influence. Often you can get 
some literary picture, like that of the earth- 
quake and the eruption of Vesuvius described 
in the Last Days of Pompeii, Never fail to 
link all these things with some literary form, if 
it is possible, some book, some picture, some 
fine description. If you will yourself read a 
book like Professor Wright's Ice Age in 
North America, or his Greenland's Ice Fields 
and Life in the North Atlantic, you will have 
all the material you need, made to your hand. 



276 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

Then when there is a flood you can make 
a beautiful play hour in the garden by making 
a small flood, of the child's own. The build- 
ing of little dams is a favorite play of children 
in any case. You can show these things in 
connection with the recreation time and give 
important names and knowledge without the 
semblance of formal teaching. Indeed all 
natural phenomena as they are reported are 
materials for your purpose. Write to the 
Geological Survey at Washington, or write to 
your congressman and get him to send you a 
list of the interesting things the Government 
prints for free distribution. You will get 
much information about the soils and the geo- 
logical formations of your own vicinity and 
will find it very interesting and often enter- 
taining. 

Often you will find the dried up beds of 
streams a good opportunity for teaching, also 
the paths which the Spring freshets or the 
melting ice have made in the woods, evidence 
of the work of water as it affects plant hfe. 
Sometimes you can see how certain foliage in- 
dicates that the plants have followed the water 
courses. This is especially interesting when 
you are rambling in the woods for Spring 
flowers. Show, too, how heat from the sun 
affects these things as you can readily do by 



GEOLOGY 277 

contrasting those spots where the sun shines 
through, and those where the density of the 
fohage prevents that heat from reaching the 
soil. These things are so obvious, that even a 
small child can readily be made to perceive the 
difference. 

If you live by the sea shore or indeed if you 
do not, the action of the tides forms an inter- 
esting introduction to the subject of the ocean 
and the action of water on a vast scale. You 
will often see the curious formations of the 
rocks on the shore, and sometimes you will see 
after a storm, evidence of the amazing power 
of the waves. If you live by a lake, greater 
or smaller, that too, will illustrate much. 
Find out the geological history of it, and often 
simply by sitting by it, and looking around 
you can show what geological forces have been 
at work. Sometimes there will be a great in- 
tervale or large area and then you can show 
how the subsidence of water has formed ter- 
races and the low levels and was gradually left 
in the bed of the living stream. Sharp turns 
in the river or stream will often show how the 
courses change and you can readily see by the 
action of the currents what curious results are 
formed by the striking by the water of some 
obstruction, and what happens till it wears 
it away or breaks through it. 



278 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

When you are dealing with the ocean you 
may well introduce the subject of ocean cur- 
rents and the wonderful story which that un- 
folds. You can take the Gulf Stream, for 
example, because it is so well known and show 
what tremendous results come from that 
warm stream across the Atlantic, affecting not 
merely ocean travel, but hardly less climate 
and through it civilization and the course of 
history, the relation of nations and the devel- 
opment of particular types of civilization. 
You can often link the history of a nation with 
its geology. You can discuss the effect on 
the character of people by the fact that they 
live in highlands or lowlands, in the interior, 
or by the sea, and by this means once more 
link the action of great natural laws with the 
story of the life of man upon the earth. 

Sometimes you will find fossils or going to 
some nearby museum you will see all kinds of 
animal remains which have been found in the 
rocks. Sometimes you will see the footprints 
of reptiles and birds, and all this will open the 
subject of the relation of geological conditions 
to the state of animal life. In a similar way 
you can trace through the corals, the rise and 
growth of islands or the eoctension of the land 
and the results which have been achieved by 
reclaiming parts of the land submerged for- 



GEOLOGY 279 

merly by the sea. You will find it interesting 
often to compare the coastline of some of the 
nations of antiquity with their present coast- 
line, showing that it has changed. 

Any unusual natural phenomenon should 
arrest your attention and make you ask how 
it came about. Sharp declivities or narrow 
gorges or water-falls great or small, all pre- 
sent problems which are in your line not to 
solve, of course, but to talk about and impress 
as a part of the story of the earth. The 
course of streams, the direction of their flow, 
and the curious turns and twists which they 
often make, are all a part of this sort of work. 
If you are in the region where there are mines 
of any description, or quarries, that again is 
an opportunity for you. It will be pleasant 
exercise and employment to take your little 
hammer with you and your chisel, and knock 
out or chip off portions of the rocks for exami- 
nation under a magnifying glass at home. ^ 

A particularly interesting and fertilizing 
branch of this study is that of glaciers and the 
action of glaciers. That is too large a sub- 
ject for consideration in a little sketch like 
this, but you will find plenty of material in 
your library which will not only be interesting 
as regards the glaciers, but will do much in a 
literary way besides. Pictures of the great 



280 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

mountain ranges, of the Rockies, of the Alps, 
of the Canadian Rockies, are all easily acces- 
sible, and a comparison of them will be found 
of great interest and the books about them full 
of fascinating material which has literary as 
well as scientific interest. Often, in books of 
travel which you will read or cause to be read, 
you will come upon some strange information 
as to geological formations which, of course, 
you will seize upon for your purposes here. 
But especially the study of the great glacial 
epoch in North America will open a vast store- 
house of knowledge and with it many other 
things which will be useful in other fields also. 
Often particular localities make the subject 
of intense interest hke the study of the Grand 
Canon or the Yosemite Valley^, about which 
all sorts of information can easily be obtained. 
But keep steadily to the scientific aspect of the 
subject though you will use the pictorial and 
human interest of the subject to make the sci- 
entific side entertaining. Always keep in 
mind that though you are entertaining, your 
purpose is to instruct. Use the scientific 
terms. And if you mean erosion say so. If 
you mean sedimentation say that. And show 
what it is. Utilize all the knowledge that you 
get from other fields here, notably that from 
the history and life of plants, with the gases 



GEOLOGY 281 

which enter into their life, and the forces which 
modify them. The air, the wind, the sun, the 
soil, and all that in them is, are a part of this 
study. This does not mean that you will al- 
ways, or even generally, deal with these things 
as you would with mature people, but when 
you dOj do it in scientific terms, 

A very good and simple plan for the wider 
general geological outlook is to get a geologi- 
cal map of the state where you happen to live, 
or of the country, and get a general view of 
the whole region, its mountains, its valleys, its 
lakes and rivers, and the various kinds of soil. 
Link this with the location of the centres of 
population and the industries and the natural 
products, showing why certain industries are 
where they are, and how the organization of 
industry must to a certain degree follow 
the great natural distribution of raw mate- 
rial. Compare the agricultural regions in 
this respect with the manufacturing regions. 
Compare the great mining regions and their 
products, with those of other regions. Often- 
times it will make an interesting experiment 
to go into the composition of certain articles 
and ask where the material came from and 
then work out where it probably was made. 

For this purpose you may take, let us say, 
coal. You can very readily get all the mate- 



282 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

rial you can possibly use. The composition 
and formation of the coal beds, the rise of in- 
dustries because of the abundance of fuel, and 
the correlation of many kinds of activity on 
this account, makes a most interesting story. 
Or you can take limestone and the settlement 
of certain populations by reason of the lime- 
stone in the soil, will disclose some very curi- 
ous facts as to the settlements in our own land, 
by populations who sought soil like that to 
which they were accustomed in Europe. Or, 
again, the use of certain kinds of building 
materials because they happened to be plenti- 
ful, causing decisive influence in the habits of 
the people by reason of the houses in which 
they lived, all deal with this subject. Every- 
thing leads back to the soil, the earth which is 
the mother of us all. If you want to give a 
chemical turn to the subject, write to the De- 
partment of Agriculture and get some of its 
pubhcations about the soils and what may he 
done to change them or enrich them and make 
them more productive. One thing always 
leads to another, but you are always adding 
to the knowledge of the child and telling it the 
things which will presently have very much 
more meaning than they seem to have at the 
outset, and will lead it naturally and habit- 



GEOLOGY 283 

ually to correlate things which often seem to 
be very widely apart. 

Volcanoes form another interesting branch 
of the subject and though you will deal with 
it only superficially you will nevertheless be 
laying important foundations. The stories 
of eruptions make very vivid reading and are 
listened to with breathless interest. The spec- 
tacle of a fiery mountain, pouring out smoke 
and flame and streams of lava, give you plenty 
of scope, not only for all your descriptive 
powers, but with it all you may tell the story 
of the untamed forces of nature about which 
we have not yet heard the last word. There 
are many interesting volumes in almost every 
library on this subject. 

You will also find that as you get better ac- 
quainted with the stages of periods of the 
earth's development, there is a regular ascend- 
ing movement in the animal world and you 
can thus easily and naturally correlate the 
stages of animal development with the periods 
of the earth's life also. Making tables of this 
sort is interesting work and when there has 
been enough of a foundation laid, and it does 
not require as much as one might suppose, it 
makes a very interesting exercise to locate, in 
time, the varieties of animal life, beginning at 



284 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

the lowest. This will also give you an en- 
tirely new field for linguistic study, because 
your study will bring you into contact with 
any number of strange names and their his- 
tory will supply your material for Mnguistic 
work. Your experience with the geological 
vocabulary will be one of the interesting 
things in connection with it, both for your own 
enjoyment and that of the children. Your 
main purpose being fertilization you will 
dwell on the words and their use, and when 
you have occasion in reading other material to 
notice one or more of these geological terms, 
make use at once of your opportunity to fix 
the knowledge which you had given when you 
had this subject specifically in mind. 

Geology is in general the most comprehen- 
sive of all the sciences because it is, according 
to Le Conte, ''the history of the earth and its 
inhabitants as revealed in its structure and as 
interpreted by causes still in operation/' 
This takes in pretty much everything as you 
see, because it assumes a knowledge of astron- 
omy, of physics, and chemistry, of mineralogy, 
and zoology, and botany, because the plant 
and animal life are so closely related with the 
earth's development. For this reason there 
is hardly any branch of knowledge which does 
not link itself somewhere with geology, and 



GEOLOGY 285 

this gives it living vital interest, because the 
causes which made the earth in the past, what 
it is now, are, many of them, in active opera- 
tion now, so that presently we shall watch the 
earth change about us and see ourselves adapt- 
ing ourselves to the changes which take place. 
Sometimes we accelerate these changes by our 
own habits or works, as when we take off, ruth- 
lessly, the great forests and release great 
floods which formerly were absorbed by the 
roots of the trees and the vegetation which 
lived with them. Or, when we take up vast 
beds of minerals and change the place of vast 
bodies of the earth. Or, when we dig sub- 
ways or underground railways and alter the 
course of subterranean streams or make other 
changes which vitally affect the hfe of man- 
kind. And when you come to see the signifi- 
cance of all these things, and make the child 
see them, the earth and the changes in it be- 
come matters of the very keenest interest. 
The sciences, strictly as such, when they come 
to be studied later will be doubly interesting 
because there is a reasonable substratum of 
general and accurate information about some 
of the more elementary matters. 

The composition and chemical elements of 
rocks will afford many pleasant experiments 
for recreation hours. And when to this is 



286 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

added the study of the characteristics of min- 
erals such as color, form, hardness, lustre, and 
the like, there are supplied all the materials 
necessary to give the child suitable occupation 
for hands as well as mind. 

The extreme value and importance of all 
this will be borne in upon your own mind, if 
you will reflect just at this time on the great 
importance to the warring nations of Europe 
of raw materials to the nations, and how im- 
portant these things are to national life. See 
how important it is, for example, to the na- 
tions to have a large supply of petroleum, of 
copper, or iron or coal, and what a tremen- 
dous importance suddenly these natural sup- 
plies assume to the nations who want to build 
ships and guns, and transport armies, and 
supply them with food and otherwise carry on 
their wars. See what importance scientific 
knowledge has played thus far, and see how 
for the first time, science is recognized as hav- 
ing utterly supplanted the qualities of per- 
sonal heroism and valor in the fight of great 
forces by land or by sea. For the first time in 
history, nations have organized science boards 
to assist their army and navy boards in the 
preparation for successful war. See how 
great the changes have been and how gas 
bombs and liquid fire and a vast variety of 



GEOLOGY 287 

other chemical discoveries have come to have 
a fearful significance in such struggles. Our 
own country, for the first time in its history, 
has a hoard of invention for its navy and has 
called such men as Edison and others to bring 
the resources of science to the aid of war prep- 
aration. 

In the midst of all such things nothing can 
be healthier than to turn to the great natural 
forces which the Creator has placed in the 
earth and which we are only on the merest 
edge of knowing, in all their fulness and 
power. Where so much is done in the labora- 
tory, and where all that is done there has to be 
wrought out of the raw materials, it will be 
seen what an immense advantage it is to know 
a few of these things early in life, to gain,. an 
adequate understanding of their significance 
later on in the more formal period of educa- 
tion. When one means is exhausted or de- 
stroyed, men have had to find another way 
and necessity here as elsewhere has been the 
mother of invention. See what has been 
wrought in the conquest of the air and the 
submerging of war craft under the sea! But 
the air, and the sea, have always been here and 
their possibilities are even now only partially 
understood. But better than these processes 
is fij-st hand contact and observation with all 



288 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

these forces themselves and a knowledge of 
how they work. Thus is the mind trained to 
know something of the world in which the hu- 
man race has hved, and must continue to live, 
and thus is the race prepared for its life in 
the future. 

There is no reason known to me why young 
children should not be made to know, long be- 
fore what we call their education begins, most 
of these great elemental powers and learn to 
guide their thought in consonance and har- 
mony with these laws. Water wears the rock. 
And these little streams of scientific knowl- 
edge wear away the mechanical notions of life 
by which so many millions of people live 
and die, without ever knowing the earth in 
which they are born and live and pass away. 
But they should know. And such knowledge 
makes for a higher type of life. It makes for 
a more reasoning and reasonable existence. 
It teaches the value of life and the long road 
through which life has come to have the mean- 
ing that it now has for man. It leads to re- 
flection and in the best sense taking life seri- 
ously, which is just what the vast mass of men 
do not do. But it does, besides all this, the 
higher work of naturalizing a man in his world 
and making it for him a place of satisfaction 
and rational labor and effort. 



GEOLOGY 289 

It does even more. Personally I believe 
here is the field for the true culture of the emo- 
tions. Science may spiritualize the world yet, 
in spite of the fact that until now it has been 
employed only in a pagan way. The spirit- 
ualizing process begun early, creates rever- 
ence for the work of God and as with the bibli- 
cal writers, rocks, floods, and fields, mountains, 
and trees, the birds of the air and the fishes of 
the sea all speak of the glory of God and the 
wonder of His handiwork, so a little child may 
be led into the noblest of spiritual conceptions 
through contact with the world of God's crea- 
tive skill and power. 

Every little geological excursion after this 
manner will change the prevailing conception 
of a finished world, into a fresh one of a world 
in the making. It will lead to a fresh under- 
standing of the value of all things. It will 
create abhorrence of waste. It will see both 
the power and the economy of nature. It 
will cause deep feelings and dreams about the 
nature and purpose of life itself. It has al- 
ways been to me, an interesting fact, that most 
of the geologists I have known have been men 
in the deepest and highest sense religious men. 
They went abroad in God's world and saw 
His operations in a big and divine way. In 
contrast with the laboratory worker, who felt 



290 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

the glory of his own little achievement, these 
saw the mighty strokes of great monumental 
laws and saw things wrought out on a huge 
scale. Huge mountains thrown up where 
none existed before, vast areas bodily trans- 
ported from one spot in the earth and set down 
in another, mighty monoliths lifted as a child 
lifts a pebble and carried vast distances, and 
then left in striking and weird postures to 
arrest the attention and challenge the brain of 
man ! All these are the things you start in the 
brain of the child to think about. You set it 
to work on something which challenges all its 
own possibilities, and start it on the long road 
which has no ending, the wonder work of the 
Almighty. 

Few people can gaze on the wonderflow of 
Niagara without deep emotion. I once saw 
with terror the Mississippi overflow in my boy- 
hood, so that in places it was twenty-five miles 
wide. I have gazed on the Bernese Oberland 
and quivered under the scintillating beauty of 
the Alps, beauty beyond the descriptive powers 
of man. I have shuddered under the cliffs of 
the Canadian, Rockies and felt an awe, which 
no religious thinking can possibly produce. 
If you give your little child an insight into 
these things you are building the mind of a 
human being, who must perforce become great 



GEOLOGY 291 

in thought and learn to live greatly in the pres- 
ence of the greatness of creation. How dif- 
ferent all this from the narrow-minded being 
who simply rises, feeds, takes a trolley to his 
office or store, and then back again at night, 
and never knows what the world really is ! 

Think of the vast masses borne along stead- 
ily by the flowing waters of the rivers of the 
earth! Think of the silent disintegration 
of granite cHffs, which the wind is causing 
through the years, see the valleys exalted and 
the mountains and hills made low! Think of 
the fertilizing flood of the Nile, and the indus- 
trial flow of the Merrimac, and the devastat- 
ing flow at times of the Mississippi! Think 
of the commerce borne by the great oceans, 
think of the harbors and ports of the world! 
Think of the trade winds and the ocean cur- 
rents! Think of the mined substances which 
we dig out of the darkness of the bosom of the 
earth, and make into a million wonderful, and 
useful and beautiful things. Hardly a child 
but has personal ornaments the history of 
which scientifically scrutinized and analyzed 
will not be made to gaze with wonder upon the 
transformation of nature's raw materials into 
the beautiful finished product. This is be- 
cause the mind of man has sought them out, 
thought about them, learned to separate them. 



292 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

learned how they came about, and then prac- 
ticed in their shaping and fashioning for the 
higher uses of man. When you think of geol- 
ogy as embodying this kind of reflection and 
study, you have something other than merely 
memorizing the names of geological epochs, 
and the classification of strata and the analyz- 
ing of rocks and minerals. You have here 
the romance of the earth. And this is what 
you must teach, together with the crude, bare 
facts. It is a romance, wonderful, inspiring 
and full of thrilling situations and volcanic 
moments, literally and emotionally. 

A great man once showed my children a bit 
of radium, one of the earliest and finest speci- 
mens in the country. No one will ever be able 
to describe what was in their countenances and 
what was wrought into their hearts and souls 
by this great man, as he talked about radium 
and what it might do and the significance of 
its discovery! But what Professor Morse did 
out of his own wonderful knowledge, you may 
out of much less knowledge do for your own 
children, having first made your own heart 
and mind responsive to the meaning of these 
great natural facts and forces. 

It may be well to make collections of rocks 
and minerals or perhaps, where they are ob- 
tainable, of the various kinds of semi-precious 



GEOLOGY 293 

stone. All these things help, of course, if 
to every one of them there is added some- 
thing of scientific import. Altogether, geo- 
logical studies lend themselves most readily to 
the larger ways of thinking and supply the 
subjects for reflection upon the wider aspects 
of life more naturally than almost any other 
kind of scientific studies. It is more possible 
to generalize about them for one thing. They 
call for inferential reasoning for another. 
They are not so clamorous for immediate de- 
cision as some others, and all this tends to 
make them the medium for larger thinking 
and a wider view of things than many others. 
Their comprehensiveness and inclusiveness, of 
course, adds to this also. But certainly noth- 
ing is so calculated to open the minds of chil- 
dren and parents to each other and reveal 
them to each other as to take little excursions 
for geological study together. The human 
discoveries will be the greatest of all! 



CHAPTER XII 

GEOMETRY 

In urging the study of geometry by young 
children, I wish to be understood as taking up 
not merely that specific branch of mathemat- 
ics, but the general subject, from geometry as 
its easiest and most pleasant point of ap- 
proach. I have on many occasions testified to 
my belief that most of the time spent in math- 
ematics in elementary education is worse than 
wasted, an opinion which I acquired from 
President Eliot more than twenty years ago. 
The study of arithmetic as it is carried on by 
most schools, public and private, is a waste of 
time, and, as I believe, a distinct deterrent to 
rapid and effective progress, to say nothing of 
being a stupid barrier to advancement in 
those benighted regions, where it is made the 
sine qua non to promotion. Most of the 
mathematics, as thus studied, contribute noth- 
ing particular to the child's knowledge, give 
no intellectual stimulus, are utterly barren of 
interest and a source of trial to teachers and 
students alike. It is, of course, necessary that 

294 



GEOMETRY 295 

young children should be taught numbers, 
a matter easily acquired. They should be 
taught to count, as they are taught to spell. 
They should learn simple addition,, simple 
sidjtr action, simple multiplication and simple 
division. But even these may be taught col- 
laterally. The multiplication tables may be 
mastered easily and musically, if possible, but 
no educational value should be attached to 
this. It is memoriter work, pure and simple, 
and should be inculcated as such. 

But the whole subject should be approached 
from an entirely different end, as I view it, 
and I have styled this geometry because the 
materials are derived from that branch of 
mathematics most readily. For example, you 
can teach a child that a point has position only. 
You can show it that a geometrical straight 
line is the shortest distance between two 
points. You can show it what a right angle 
is, an acute angle and an obtuse angle, and 
with this instruction you can teach the use of 
these words and their general place in English 
usage. You can proceed to teach about tri- 
angles and squares and rectangular figures 
and then go on to polygons of all sizes and 
kinds and in every case you are dealing with 
something tangible, concrete and capable of 
immediate and direct application. 



296 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

In this manner of proceeding you can teach 
all the things that so much time is wasted 
upon. You can show a little child that al- 
ready handles a tape measure in making doll 
clothes how to measure the sides of any figure; 
you can thus teach it linear measurement. 
You can take a checker board and teach it 
square measure and do it in fifteen minutes 
and never have it forgotten. You can give 
habits of eccact measurement, the basis of all 
scientific knowledge, and you can teach neces- 
sary reasoning by this means most clearly and 
satisfactorily. 

From plane surfaces you can proceed with 
ease to solids. You can deal with cubes 
and cylinders and you can teach drawing 
while you are doing. You can give manual 
dexterity and skill in handling tools and in- 
struments while you are doing this. You can 
have tables measured, and floors measured, 
and all kinds of figures identified, and all 
kinds of forms geometrically identified all the 
time. You can have circles drawn and all 
sorts of diameters drawn and you can give the 
principles and facts of relation as you go along 
as a part to practical exercise. As a matter 
of fact many children do these things without 
any instruction, only the parents do not get 



GEOMETRY 297 

the full value out of what the child does natu- 
rally and without any urging whatever. 

In doing all this as with the other subjects 
we have talked about you will always give 
them their proper names. You will talk 
about the diameter as diameter. You will 
talk about plane surfaces and solids just as 
they do in any high school geometry class. 
There is not the slightest reason why you 
should not and there are all the reasons possi- 
ble why you should. While you are doing 
this you can take along many principles of 
physics like weight and volume and power of 
resistance but all this is incidental to the busi- 
ness of teaching measurements. 

There are so many ways of utilizing these 
things that it is hard to state where you shall 
begin. We used to measure the circumfer- 
ence of trees or of plates or of wheels and the 
like. We used to draw all kinds of figures 
and then see how many things, geometrical 
facts, about them we could tell, like identifying 
the kinds of angles, the names of the figures, 
and the like. In doing all this we taught the 
simple elements of arithmetic and sometimes 
some of the more involved processes. 

In this sort of study we also taught many 
of the simpler propositions both of geometry 



298 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and algebra. My own opinion is that mathe- 
matical study may very properly begin with 
algebra because the use of letters is so much 
more simple and so much more interesting. 
The use of such expressions as "the sum of two 
numbers," "the difference of two numbers," 
the "difference of their squares," their "cubes" 
and many such terms are easily comprehended 
while the use of terms as factors and factoring 
generally is much more easily comprehended 
with letters than with figures. In a word, 
you are dealing with the terminology of math- 
ematical study which is only saying that you 
are extending the child's knowledge of Eng- 
lish, a highly specialized branch, to be sure, but 
nevertheless a branch of English which needs 
to be mastered along with the rest of the dia- 
lect of knowledge. 

It has not been my experience that children 
thus early inducted into this terminology have 
any difficulty with such terms as tangent, arc, 
perpendicular and the like. Centre and ra- 
diuSj area and volume, all in their proper sig- 
nificance never presented any special diffi- 
culty and on the contrary presented many in- 
teresting psychological evidences that there is 
a natural affiliation of the human mind with 
these things if we ever find out how to express 
it. I believe that much, if not most, of the 



GEOMETRY 299 

trouble with the entire subject of mathe- 
matics is due to the fact that most of the 
mathematicians know nothing about the Eng- 
lish language, I judge this, of course, by 
the language which I find in the books on 
mathematics but more especially, by the use 
of the tongue they make when they propound 
what they call "original" problems. They are 
original in many more senses than intended, 
and mostly so in the monstrous misuse of the 
mother tongue. If there is anything calcu- 
lated to disgust or harass a young student 
more than these things, I cannot imagine what 
it would be. 

Take most of the definitions which you 
will find at the beginning of any text book 
in geometry like, straight line, curved line, 
broken line, plane surface, curved surface, 
rectilinear figure, curvilinear figure, and the 
like. I have never experienced the slightest 
difficulty in teaching these to little children 
with blocks and having them draw on com- 
mand the kind of figure required. Indeed, it 
was in connection with circles that I took a 
globe and taught all I know about latitude 
and longitude and many other things inciden- 
tally. Of course, the main interest is not 
mathematical, except in that it teaches exact- 
ness and measurements and calls for reason- 



300 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

ing and demands proof. These are much 
more important than all the rest combined. 
But even here it must be remembered that the 
reasoning is always necessary reasoning. In 
this it differs so thoroughly from the method 
employed in most of the other sciences that 
almost any child will feel the difference, unless 
the method of approach is some such an one as 
I am now describing. 

The approach to this subject is probably 
made easier and more pleasant by the fact that 
the children are using their hands as well as 
their heads. Handling a sphere is a very dif- 
ferent thing from talking about one. So, too, 
handling pyramids, cubes, and cylinders, tells 
more about them in three minutes than three 
hours of talking about them, because of the 
difficulties of exact definition, suited to the 
mind of a child. Of course, it can be done. 
But to take a pyramid and measure all its 
sides, and find out all that can be told about it 
in a simple way, is great training in exactness, 
both of practice and thinking. Often if you 
will let several children do this at the same 
time and then let them compare their results, 
you will develop a first class debating society. 

When we struck a term like equilateral, or 
quadrilateral, I always used to rest the chil- 
dren by making the subject one of linguistic 



GEOMETRY 301 

interest because those words lend themselves 
to a good deal of interesting discourse. It 
used to be a source of great amusement to me 
to hear the children repeat these discourses 
with my own intonations and gestures to other 
and younger children. But I see no reason 
why this is not as good a process of training 
or how it differs in effectiveness, as indeed it 
did not, in my household, from letting the 
children experiment with a piece of dough in 
baking, or a piece of cloth in making the dress 
of a doll! In both cases we were playing with 
different kinds of knowledge. The only dif- 
ference was, the kind I played with, is neces- 
sary to get into college and has sanction as 
knowledge worth an academic degree, while 
the other has as yet no such sanction. They 
still think stones are better than bread at the 
universities ! 

As I write these lines I can look about me 
and hardly see an object which was not used 
in this sort of study. The floors, the walls, 
the pictures, the windows, the desks and this 
very typewriter, were all utiUzed in this par- 
ticular branch of study. We drew all sorts 
of figures and we noticed all the various 
shapes, which were to be found in the room 
and we accustomed ourselves to noting differ- 
ences of shape and size and area, and, in fact, 



S02 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

all the things which made use of our geometri- 
cal knowledge and where the processes were 
not too complicated, we worked them out. I 
often had measurements of window screens 
made, or of pipe, or of the width and length of 
stairs, or of rugs, and all sorts of objects which 
gave, so far as I have been able to observe, 
quite as accurate results as one gets from most 
children in the earlier years of the high school. 
It took longer of course, and there was the 
natural clumsiness and lack of manual dexter- 
ity and skill, but the final results were not 
more inaccurate than those which I have seen 
given by high school children. In fact exact 
measurement is not a common thing. Ask 
any builder or ask yourself when you have 
had occasion to make measurements! 

This form of mathematical study with little 
children lends itself most effectively for intel- 
ligent play. Building with card hoard or 
with stiff paper or with blocks or even with 
boards^ and the drawing of plans and working 
in accord with the plans, is valuable manual 
training and experience and this is the best 
way to get it. What I have seen of man- 
ual training has not, except in its more ad- 
vanced stages, been higher in educational 
quality, though naturally more exact in 
achievement, than what I have seen done by 



GEOMETRY 303 

little children in this respect, and it is my opin- 
ion, that with such training a ten-year-old 
child can do in a single year all the arithmetic 
of the first eight grades and where there is any 
special aptitude in this direction even more. 
It is to me proof positive of the utter worth- 
lessness of most of the mathematics of the 
grades, beyond mere memoriter work and dis- 
cipline and speed in writing or reciting. 

Hours and hours of happy pleasant occupa- 
tion may be secured in this way and all sorts 
of material may be utilized. As I recall 
it now, in our own household, we utiUzed 
cups and saucers, measured and drew broken 
pieces, tin cans, the discarded boxes in the 
kitchen of wood and of tin or card board, and 
caused the children to make all sorts of articles 
some of which remain to this day. The habit 
of working after a plan or model we found a 
most useful and fruitful method of working. 
And in connection with these things, let me 
say, there is no possible use in getting valu- 
able and costly materials for this sort of thing. 
Your own home has all that you need and it 
only calls for a little reflection on your part to 
provide all the materials you need. Here, 
too, you can use all the kindergarten materials 
if you care to do it that way. My own experi- 
ence has been that children who have been 



S04 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

taught how serious tasks are performed, do 
not wish to think they are "playing" at their 
work, but wish to see something accomphshed 
which represents real achievement and gets 
real praise and approval. In our own home 
it led to the cultivation of the habit of inven- 
tion. My own children will never forget the 
wagons and other vehicles they themselves 
built and with which they spent hours while 
the most costly and handsome things which 
had been purchased, lay about unused. 

In mathematical study of this kind and its 
instruction, one fact should be borne in mind. 
It is here that the superior maturity of the 
parent or teacher counts for most and where 
the form of devising the problem or arrang- 
ing the work has its best illustration. But 
everything should he concrete. Abstractions 
are not of a great deal of use even to mature 
people, and even less to children. You can 
prove this any time by telling a child about 
some geometrical figure and noticing its blank 
inability to comprehend what you want, and 
then setting the same child to work out the 
same problem with tools of some kind or mate- 
rials with which it can be given the opportu- 
nity of measuring and comparing its own work 
with the model which it is set to follow. 

Another feature of it which impressed me 



GEOMETRY 305 

was that it developed the habit of pausing at 
stated intervals and checking up results from 
time to time. Most mathematical study being 
based on necessary reasoning admits of just 
this, hence you can trace errors or you can set 
the child to go over its own work either for- 
ward or backward and find out its own errors. 
This is a very educative process because it 
stimulates scrutiny and comparison and meas- 
urements and leads to care and precision as 
few other things can or do. In many forms 
of study this is not possible. But because 
mathematics for the most part is based on 
necessary reasoning, the various stages can be 
marked off with exactness and the error abso- 
lutely located. This can be worked out in all 
sorts of ways. And most children will have 
genuine and justifiable satisfaction in com- 
paring the substantial accuracy of some later 
work with the clumsiness and inaccuracy of 
some earlier performance. But, in any case, 
there is always activity with the hands as well 
as the mind and this helps in the dual develop- 
ment in connection with matters of real educa- 
tive utihty. 

A necessary part of mathematical study is 
that of recording accurately what has been 
worked out. Experience seems to show that 
about so much practice is needful for each in- 



306 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

dividual child, before it can write exactly what 
it means to write and what it knows absolutely. 
Most children can do very much better in an 
oral examination than in a written one, and 
the reason for this is perfectly plain. When 
it comes to writing accurately, this in itself is 
a kind of art. It is so much an art that it is 
not infrequently true, that inferior students 
can write better papers than students who have 
greater actual knowledge of a given subject. 
It is in the mathematical work that this must 
be mastered though it comes not less in the 
work of languages, but while there it fre- 
quently explains itself, an error in mathemat- 
ics is fatal to the whole subsequent process. 
For this reason great accuracy should he in- 
sisted upon in writing, copying and drawing 
and frequent repetition should be insisted upon 
though it may be done in a manner which will 
not be too taxing to the little minds. But 
nothing short of absolute correctness should 
be insisted upon since this is all there is to the 
study of mathematics. A line is exactly six 
inches long or it is not. It is ascertainable 
whether it is or it is not. Never leave such a 
matter in doubt. In fact, leave nothing in 
doubt, about which final knowledge can be 
obtained, though this rule has more force in 



GEOMETRY 307 

mathematics than anywhere else because as 
stated that is all there is to it. 

It is here, too, that the general value 
of mathematical studies can be determined. 
Two and two are four, and they are no more 
to a sage who has lived seventy years, than 
they are to a child of four years. The sage 
knows no more about it than the four-year-old, 
because that is all there is to know and can be 
verified by the one as well as by the other. 
Nothing that the sage has experienced in hfe, 
no wider contact with men and events, no in- 
sight into the human mind or the human heart, 
can add one jot or tittle to that fact. It is 
just so with the multipHcation tables. They 
are not matters of reasoning or experience or 
depth of feeling or point of view. They are 
just mechanical facts and hence their only 
value is that they are right. 

It is one of the unanswerable proofs of my 
position about most of the mathematics, I 
mean, of course, the pure mathematics, that 
they are steadily being reduced to machine ac- 
tion. No bank any longer relies upon the 
clerks to add up accurately, long columns of 
figures, or even performing certain kinds of 
other figuring transactions, because they have 
machinery which can do it more rapidly and 



308 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

do it more accurately, A machine never gets 
tired doing the same thing. A human being 
does. The human mind craves new applica- 
tions of principles, and fresh insight and 
fresh knowledge concerning all that comes to 
it. A machine has no such necessities and be- 
cause mathematics has no such capabilities or 
natural possibilities, most arithmetical trans- 
actions can he done by machines which are 
more and more coming into general use be- 
cause they are more trustworthy than the hu- 
man mind, susceptible as the latter is to moods, 
weariness and error. Take good note of this, 
when you are urged to make your child a good 
arithmetician and find his progress impeded 
because he refuses the stupidities which are 
supposed to make for discipline! 

But, by these same tokens, when you do 
have anything to do with them they must be 
accurate or they are nothing. Hence insist 
on precision. See that results are exactly 
right, not "about right" or "nearly right" and 
don't allow yourself to use such terms in con- 
nection with mathematical work. They are 
right or they are wrong and that is all there is 
to say about them. That is the sum of their 
intellectual content. Hence you must get 
that or you get nothing. In fact, you get 
worse than nothing. You get habits of inac- 



GEOMETRY 309 

curacy which are damaging beyond calcula- 
tion. I believe the study of arithmetic in the 
schools, as often carried on, is responsible for 
a vast amount of the carelessness and heed- 
lessness of many people. They could not get 
the work absolutely right. So they took 
''something just as good'' meaning thereby 
"nearly righf or "about right." 

In many communities this is being recog- 
nized and changes are taking place, which 
show a recognition of the valuelessness of what 
I have been describing, but there are many 
communities where these things are insisted 
upon, as the condition of higher and advanced 
study. You will find it far better to do all 
this work at home, than to trust it to the 
school, where almost perforce it has to be 
badly done, and done under conditions which 
can hardly fail to secure irritation and tribu- 
lation, both for the teacher and the pupil. 

While you are dealing with the matter of 
measurements you may take the occasion also 
to teach the metric system which is more and 
more coming into general use, and which the 
child will have to have later on in any case. 
It is simplicity itself and can just as well be 
taught here as anywhere. Here again you 
can use your word studies in connection with 
it, which will make it interesting as you go 



310 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

along, but in any case, try it out and see what 
comes of it. It will be one thing more learned 
in this direction and will aid in your general 
plan of fertihzation. At the same time you 
can teach the elements of percentage, and the 
decimal system, because all these run on all 
fours together. In fact as you take up the 
words of any given science and analyze them 
you will be preparing for the teaching of the 
science itself because you will be giving defini- 
tions and furnishing illustrations which will 
themselves take you a considerable way on the 
road to what you wish to achieve. 

If all this seems very advanced to you and 
almost impossible, just try it out. Of course, 
you will clarify your own ideas so that you 
know exactly what you are talking about and 
then the matter will be easy enough. Just 
keep before you constantly that a clear idea 
can be comprehended by a child, no matter 
what the subject matter happens to be and do 
not underestimate this capacity. You will in 
general find that the real limitations are not 
those of the child, but your inability to tell 
clearly what you know perfectly. 

As you glance through your arithmetic se- 
lect the applied forms of it, and try them from 
time to time, always relating them to some- 
thing specific and that has some immediate in- 



GEOMETRY Sll 

terest to the child itself. The ways will sug- 
gest themselves to you as you go on and you 
will set forth on many a tour of exploration 
and come home laden with many things which 
you did not expect to find out when you set 
out. Whenever the child raises some ques- 
tion about which you are not clear yourself 
work it out with the child and let him see the 
process by which you arrive at your own con- 
clusions. The decimal system, to which I 
have just referred in its apphed forms, has 
many such examples of practical application. 
The use of money and interest and the like, 
can easily be shown in intelligible form and the 
principles very readily inculcated. And there 
are many others. 

If all this seems rather like a large contract, 
just remember how before the era of text 
books and in a comparatively recent period, 
such operations had to be performed by rela- 
tively ilhterate people as indeed they still are. 
Your child with the modern resources of 
knowledge, can do to-day what these people 
did years ago, being acquainted only with the 
crudest possible ways of proceeding. Just 
study the work of a cash register and let that 
teach you. Notice sometime some of the 
more highly developed balances of your 
butcher in which not only the weight is given 



312 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

but the price is worked out on the tables, call- 
ing for almost no calculation. In fact notice 
all such machines wherever you come across 
them, in fact, every device for measurement or 
computation, A little attention to the ma- 
chine will show how simple it is, concretely 
studied. But never try to do these things in 
the abstract. I have elsewhere spoken of the 
habit of weighing things purchased at the 
grocer's or the butcher's. Plan to do the 
same thing with dry goods which can be meas- 
ured also, all of which will teach many other 
things besides the mathematics involved. It is 
by these constant demands, here a little, there 
a little, line upon line, and precept upon pre- 
cept, that principles are estabhshed. 



CHAPTER XIII 

ETHICS 

It is when we come to the field of ethics 
that we appreciate the immense value of the 
course which we have been pursuing. Noth- 
ing seems so easy as the regulation of conduct. 
Nothing actually proves so difficult. Broadly 
speaking there are two kinds of people in the 
world: those who obey some outward authority 
and those who are governed by their inward 
light and convictions. To a certain degree 
we are all governed by what is outside of us, 
because manners, customs, place of residence, 
occupation and the like, all begin to exercise 
an iron sway over us from the moment we are 
born. The very food we eat has its part in 
making us what we are. And to many of 
these things we must conform, because no man 
liveth to himself in this world any longer. 
There used to be a time when, if a group of 
people did not like the place where they were 
they could go off to some uninhabited place, 
and start a new civilization of their own. But 
that period is now over. You may change 

313 



S14 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

jurisdictions if you please, but wherever you 
go, somebody has already set up a particular 
code to which in part, at least, you must con- 
form. 

But even when we have a highly developed 
state of civilization the question does not be- 
come easier. In fact, it tends to become more 
difficult because great masses of people, 
swayed by all sorts of influences, call for 
decisions which involve the most careful bal- 
ancing of facts, motives, conditions and ante- 
cedents and the like, which make it often a 
very difficult matter to know just what to do, 
even when there is an unflinching disposition 
to do right. We have before us at the pres- 
ent moment a striking illustration of this con- 
dition. Just see what different interpreta- 
tions equally upright people put upon the 
various facts of the war! Read the docu- 
ments which the authorized spokesmen have 
offered to us for the justification of their 
course, and if you have any reason left, you 
will at once become aware how hard the pres- 
sure is, in the modern world, to regulate con- 
duct and opinions. 

You will also see, if you examine this mat- 
ter, that the meaning of words plays a huge 
part in these opinions. You will see states- 
men, who ought to know better, using the same 



ETHICS S15 

word in different senses — a very common fal- 
lacy of logic. You will see them twisting per- 
fectly clear matters into all sorts of shapes, 
in order to make a point where none exists. 
You will see them confusing matters, some- 
times very obviously, but just as often without 
intention, because they are juggling with the 
meaning of words and are either enlarging 
or contracting the content of a particular word 
or phrase. It is in matters of this kind, that 
exact and careful English proves its value and 
where the uses of word-study and analysis ap- 
pear to best advantage. But you will see 
more. You will see how the desire to make a 
particular point is very obviously distorting 
the facts. 

Now all this, which is specially clear in war 
time, is at such times only an exaggerated 
presentation of what most people do habitu- 
ally. Careful use of language and knowl- 
edge of language tends to prevent the worst 
forms of this in ordinary times. Exact scien- 
tific knowledge gives an effective weapon for 
the checking of those who would use such 
methods upon matters which affect us. 
Hence the great value of these. But back of 
this there is always the moral question itself 
and the conception of morals, and back even 
of that a certain ingrained ethical sense which 



S16 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

is, I suppose, a union of habits and the culture 
of ethical thinking. In any event nothing 
seems so necessary to the world at this mo- 
ment as enlightened moral instruction. 

This instruction should begin very early in 
youth and I am urging that it be done in the 
formal terms, for the reason that I have pre- 
viously urged, namely, that by this means the 
child will have earlier access to the hterature 
and discussions of moral questions, and issues 
will be less subject to prejudices and passions 
and will have a better chance to lead an or- 
derly, happy and useful life and one that is 
governed by the highest motives. Many peo- 
ple do the best they know how to do and this 
is nothing but the simple truth. But their 
"best" is so crude and damaged an affair, that 
we not infrequently wish some persons were 
more positively bad, that their reformation 
might seem to them the more necessary. 
There is nothing in this world so difficult to 
deal with as a human being who thinks he is 
right and has neither the knowledge nor the 
training to he susceptible to the agencies by 
which he can be shown to be wrong. Such 
people are the worst enemies of moral growth 
and progress in the world. Positive wrongs 
show their character at once and can be 
branded as such. But the actions which have 



ETHICS 317 

the dubious shading, which make it hard to 
condemn, and harder to approve, and which 
make a perfectly fair person unable to decide 
just which is predominant, present the great 
difficulties. It is just so with studies. A 
positive and palpable error usually leads to 
its own correction. It is the doubtful things 
that complicate studies. They also present the 
main complications of life. 

Under this intensive regimen which I have 
been advocating I have many times advised 
exactness as to detail and urged that you take 
any amount of time and patience to get exact- 
ness. Nothing is lost by this. On the con- 
trary, when the habit has been formed, prog- 
ress is very rapid. Now ethical instruction 
which is to be effective has to be preceded by 
something which is more or less exact at a 
time when there is no judgment, no independ- 
ent reasoning power, and no ability to discrim- 
inate. That exact thing is a thing much de- 
spised in our day but one to which I believe 
the whole world will have to come back sooner 
or later. It is the principle of authority. 

By this I mean that there must be a period 
of absolute and unquestioning obedience. 
Why this should excite opposition as it so often 
does, is very strange to me. We exact abso- 
lute obedience in many things. We do not 



S18 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

let children jump into rivers, or eat poisons, 
or meddle with dangerous machinery. We 
demand and get as absolute obedience as it is 
possible for us to get. Nobody thinks he is 
being bullied when he sees a red lamp in the 
road at night! Why? Because he knows 
that is the recognized method of indicating 
danger. Nobody but a fool would drive on 
over that lamp without inquiring why it was 
there I In a similar way we have certain ex- 
periences and certain knowledge about which 
there is no doubt whatever. There are certain 
practices, the results of which we know as 
absolutely as we know that the sun shines. 
We do not hesitate to make absolutely final 
rules about them. 

Now I believe in this absolute obedience. I 
believe in getting it by the best means pos- 
sible, but I beheve an irretrievable damage has 
been done to any child that has not learned it. 
Of course, the chief use of your maturity and 
skill is to avoid needless conflicts, and this is 
the main use of your superior intelligence and 
knowledge, namely, to prevent conflicts from 
arising. But if the conflict does arise there is 
only one thing that must happen: you must win 
and get your way absolutely till a more ex- 
cellent way has been shown. This may re- 



ETHICS 319 

quire physical force, in fact, often does. But 
whether it does or not, there are two kinds of 
persons who never amount to anything in this 
world: the people who cannot do exactly as 
they are told and the people who cannot do 
anything else. Obedience, it has been said, 
is the organ of spiritual knowledge. It is the 
organ of every kind of knowledge. 

Now this is what I mean by the principle of 
authority. It lies at the basis of rational ac- 
tion. It takes for granted that experience, 
age, wider knowledge, and special training, 
are worthy of regard and until they are 
matched by something superior are to be re- 
garded absolutely. It is not necessary for a 
father to be right to insist that his will shall be 
obeyed. All the presumptions are in his favor 
in any case, assuming that he is a good man. 
The child is right in supposing that he is right 
and in standing on his word absolutely with- 
out any qualifications whatever. We fathers 
know that we are not always right, perhaps 
not usually right. But we also know that in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the child is 
safer in following our error than his own. 
There is a choice even in mistakes. You 
should train the child to know and understand 
this principle as thoroughly as it is possible to 



320 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

teach it. Because upon the recognition of its 
force, will depend much of its happiness and 
effectiveness. 

Having made this clear you should begin 
your study with the child by showing its 'per- 
sonal relations. You do this right along 
though not usually formally. You may well 
begin by asking what things pertain to the 
child alone. What things are personal and 
individual, how it is separated or different from 
every other creature in the world. What does 
this involve as to itself? What does it involve 
as to others? What does it mean as to be- 
havior? How does this affect ideals, aims and 
purposes? Take that word self and work in 
through its various ramifications and see what 
you get out of it. Contrast selfhood and self- 
ishness, make the various compounds of the 
word like self -consciousness, self-dependence, 
self-nurture, self-culture, self-sacrifice and 
turn over these various contrasts of meaning 
and see what they will lead to. You will have 
little difficulty in finding material here for all 
the time you wish to put into it. 

Take up the words which have to do with the 
personal moral life. Take such a word as good 
and turn it over and over, and see what comes 
of that. What is the difference between a 
good man and a good knife? What is the dif- 



ETHICS 321 

f erence in meaning, when we say a good horse 
and a good book? You will readily see that 
here you are dealing with functions and uses 
and ideals and it is your business to separate 
them and accustom the child to think along 
these lines. In a similar way you may take the 
word had, A bad man and a had error may 
be compared and various other bad things. Go 
into these distinctions because they lie at the 
base of ethical thought. You can readily make 
applications of these words which will lead to 
the very heart of ethical questions. Ask 
whether a good ball-player can also be a had 
man? Or whether a had citizen can be a good 
father? 

In a similar way you will early begin to 
make clear the distinction between natural evil 
and moral evil. What for example is the dif- 
ference between pain suffered as a consequence 
of putting the finger in the fire and that suf- 
fered when the hand is slapped for disobedi- 
ence? How does the result differ when a fall 
from a roof breaks a man's neck and kills him 
or an electric wire kills him, and the law which 
takes his hfe by electrocution? The kinds of 
evil in the world should be made the subject 
of a good deal of discussion and instruction. 
The same thing applies to all moral words, like 
wrong, for example. How does a wrong an- 



322 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

swer to a question differ from a wrong act? 
You will be surprised how soon these distinc- 
tions may be made and how important they are 
in regulating behavior and simplifying the 
questions of moral training. 

No question ever staggered me so much as 
when my own children first asked me what sin 
was ! I pondered long before answering that 
question because I did not want them to con- 
fuse sin and sins. Nor did I wish them to 
think of character merely as a series of acts. 
Nor did I wish them to think of goodness as 
a group of prohibitions. After a good deal of 
reflection I evolved this and I give it to you 
because it practically settled the question of 
moral training in our household forever. 
''Sin is the choice of something lower when 
something higher is possible/^ That lifted the 
subject entirely out of the region of specific 
acts. It made no difference whether the par- 
ticular thing was worthy or unworthy. If 
something higher and better was possible, there 
was sin, I think that simple definition, crude 
as it seems, simplified every moral problem 
which the children ever faced. It made pro- 
hibitions practically needless, and caused much 
reflection at a time when reflection is usually 
wanting. I think it induced the habit of re- 
flection as such a very desirable result apart 



ETHICS 323 

from its moral significance. Personally I 
think this kind of discussion has educational 
uses beyond all other mental exercises, because 
it almost always deals with 'personal applica- 
tions and involves the will. 

Personal rights and personal duties came 
to figure largely, because of these questions 
and answers. It led to some very amusing sit- 
uations of which the following is an example. 
I had been teaching something about the right 
of immunity on the part of others from pain, 
because of matters which were strictly of our 
own choosing and interest. And I had been 
saying, that if one of the children tumbled 
over and bumped its nose and suffered pain 
on that account, it was hardly just that the 
whole household should be made to hear the 
bawling and so be made miserable by what was 
the result of personal carelessness. Shortly 
afterward, I was coming home and one of the 
younger children ran to meet me. She stum- 
bled on the brick walk and fell and got a rather 
severe bump on her nose and was generally 
shaken up. She started in for a good cry, 
but seeing me she suddenly recalled what I had 
said and through her sobs uttered this : ''I am 
not making everybody miserable.'' It is need- 
less to say she got all the consolations, but it 
has been a source of great comfort and im- 



324 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

pressive gratitude to me, that this particular 
child afterward, threatened with an illness 
which might well have ruined her life, and 
where recovery was contingent upon excep- 
tional obedience and self-control, came through 
gloriously and is to me a miracle. Nothing 
can possibly persuade me that this child, now a 
college student, does not owe her life, in part, 
to the early assimilation of that principle of 
self-restraint, which became the means of her 
physical salvation. 

These things will occur many times when 
there seems to be a conflict of duties. When 
children's interests seem to clash, they must be 
given a chance to work out manfully their own 
decisions, even at an early age. I believe my- 
self in strong government. I am a strong 
believer in authority. But strongly as I am 
personally bent in this way, there is probably 
no household w^here greater freedom has pre- 
vailed and where less coercion has been em- 
ployed. I believe this to be due to the early 
instruction in ethical matters in the scientific 
way. 

From personal duties to social or communal 
duties is a short step and the step is taken eas- 
ily and naturally where there are any ideas to 
work upon. These same children evolved 
many comw.unity rules of their own which were 



ETHICS 325 

interesting to me, as having a decisive bearing 
upon childhood teaching in ethics as opposed 
to mere formulas. For instance, I have just 
been in the kitchen where I saw a huge plate 
of cookies which one of these children has just 
been baking, a child no longer, of course. 
Over the place there is a sign marked F. H. B. 
which means "Family Hold Back." The 
story of this injunction is that years ago when 
the mother made cookies or new bread, no limi- 
tations were placed upon their consumption, 
unless there happened to be occasion for it, 
company being expected or something of the 
sort. Well, the children themselves evolved 
the "family hold back" sign for their own guid- 
ance and soon applied it to other things, ber- 
ries if they had been berrying, or other things 
which had been gathered. I well recall how 
impressively they came to inform me that I 
was exempt from the F. H. B. rule! 

Now what was this? Simply the recogni- 
tion of a community, as separate from a per- 
sonal interest. That sign was never dis- 
obeyed. In a similar manner, I often caused 
personal caprices in taste to disappear, by 
pointing out that a happy household was im- 
possible where everybody was insisting that 
his or her tastes had to be consulted at every 
moment. Social ethics in this manner came 



326 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

to be a natural subject of discussion. The peo- 
ple at church, the habits of the people in the 
town and village, the behavior of men in public 
life, public and political questions, all came to 
be naturally discussed under the general prin- 
ciples which were being exemplified every day 
in the household. I often raised these ques- 
tions as we read the newspapers to them, and 
asked them to judge what they would do 
under such circumstances, after the manner of 
early Greek education. It was always inter- 
esting to me to see with what accuracy they 
judged public men (as I view it, of course) 
for their acts. 

The contrast between public and private 
aspects of moral questions should receive early 
attention, and social interests, in their larger 
sense, should early be brought to the notice of 
the child. If there are several children in a 
household, these matters come up naturally 
and are rationally settled generally, but their 
guidance for instructional use is a very im- 
portant part of intensive education. Nothing 
admits of so many qualifications, nothing al- 
lows so many questions which are real and just 
in their relation to the question under discus- 
sion, as the matter of moral action. It may 
fairly be said that the right kind of thinking 
here will help to right every other kind of 



ETHICS 327 

thinhing. It is important too to bring into 
this realm the questions of knowledge, like the 
possibility of complete laiowledge, how far 
right judgTiients are possible, and the func- 
tion of passing judgment on men and events 
and actions. Most mothers, in fact, do try to 
do this, because they have to do it often to find 
out just what it is they are to deal with, in 
training the character of their children. If it 
is done in set terms and with a view to causing 
the child to think in terms which make the pos- 
sibility of scientific thought, so much the bet- 
ter. 

The question of veracity should be discussed 
in many forms in relation to many matters and 
under many guises. Truthfulness and verac- 
ity should be compared. The right to reti- 
cence, the obligation to speak, and the moral 
effect of each, form interesting questions. 
How interesting may be seen in the current 
news when men, apparently of the highest 
standing, differ as to their duty in such mat- 
ters. There is hardly a community that does 
not from time to time present questions with 
which the life of the whole community is in- 
volved. Great strikes, or problems of city 
^politics and administration, the care of roads 
and highways, the laying of taxes, all these 
have an important place here. Incidentally 



22S TEACHING IN THE HOME 

elementary government may and should be 
taught here and the relation of moral action 
to government clearly/ indicated, the lack of 
which is the most lamentable fact in the pub- 
lic life of America to-day. 

Here you may also begin to give some ele- 
mentary instruction in the meaning and uses 
of law. There is probably nothing about 
which the pubhc mind is so perverted at the 
present moment, as the meaning of law, the 
administration of the law, and the status of 
courts, judges and the like. It is wise to 
teach the Httle people how courts came about 
and what law has done for civilization, what it 
means to weigh evidence and what it signi- 
fies to render a decision on the weight of evi- 
dence. This looks very mature and "oldish" 
as one says it, but in practice it is not difficult 
and the results are very important. Law and 
lawlessness begin in my judgment in the 
home, and in the habits, instruction and gen- 
eral attitudes of parents. But the obedience 
which is worth anything to the community is 
one which is based upon rationality and not 
merely upon blind acceptance of what is or- 
dered by somebody who appears to have the 
authority to give commands. 

Law naturally suggests liberty as a con- 
trast. Wliat liberty is as contrasted with 



ETHICS 329 

license can be shown in a thousand ways and 
should be. Liberty under law is the greatest 
lesson one has to learn in this world, not 
merely with relation to action, but hardly less 
with relation to opinions and the formation 
and eccpression of judgments. This last is 
very important. The uses of speech, the right 
to speak and the limits of speech are very im- 
portant things to master. You may find your 
cases made for you in any newspaper, by 
simply studying the utterances of public men. 
Proprieties of utterance in times of war, and 
utterance of opinions in times when diplomatic 
negotiations are in progress, are matters fresh 
in the public mind at this moment. Example 
goes a long way, of course, but it is not neces- 
sary merely to show the way but also to show 
the "why." 

The commoner social relations will natu- 
rally come in for friendly comment because 
they cannot be avoided. The ordinary social 
life of most families carries with it comment 
on the happenings of the community, and the 
ordinary social occurrences of one kind and 
another may either be made an instrument for 
the mental enlargement of the children or may 
be made a means for their social degradation. 
Who has not been aghast to hear the free and 
anarchic discussion of neighbors and fellow 



330 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

citizens by parents in the presence of their 
children, in a manner which could not possibly 
eventuate in anything but the destruction of 
just judgment and kindly and honorable 
opinions of mankind! These things are very 
much more important than they seem, be- 
cause they will indicate to the child that what 
is taking place in its own home is very likely 
what is taking place in other homes and that 
this is the normal and natural way of passing 
judgments and forming opinions. Of course, 
it can result in nothing but what one finds 
everywhere, petty and contemptible jealousies, 
miserable subterfuges, social lying and in- 
trigues, the abomination of much of the social 
life of to-day. The manner of it and the prac- 
tice of it begins with the listening children. 

On the contrary, when these things are 
made the occasion for an effort to test the ac- 
curacy of statements and inferences^ whether 
they do or do not conform to a fair and hon- 
prable moral standard and what the moral at- 
titude to these things should be, there is a 
distinct gain to everybody concerned. There 
are many matters about which we are reticent 
where we should speak. And many more 
about which we talk too freely, when we should 
be reticent. The critical attitude is a good 
one here, when it works all ways at once, both 



ETHICS SSI 

outwardly and inwardly. Above all the cul- 
tivation of a desire first for the facts and then 
the weighing of the meaning of social facts is 
of great importance in the training of the 
child. The same thing appHes to the great 
occurrences of the community. It is a good 
thing to show children at a comparatively early 
period the different types of life in the com- 
munity, to point out the useful people and the 
useless people. It is good to go to the indus- 
trial establislmients so that the child can get 
an adequate idea of how the things it takes for 
granted are produced, and what the human 
factor in them signifies. 

It will be a great illumination to many chil- 
dren to see what other children do with their 
lives. To go into a great industrial establish- 
ment and see hundreds of men and women at 
work, to note the regularity of their occupa- 
tion, to see the disciphne and self -subjection 
involved, and to see that it is understood that 
this goes on year in and year out, is to make 
an impression which will never be lost. Ut- 
terly apart from the interest of the work itself, 
special attention should be given to the human 
beings who are doing this work, and questions 
raised as to their point of view as to life, work, 
recreation, pleasure, the worth of existence, 
and the limits of initiative and development. 



332 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

which comes to persons under such conditions. 
Nothing so impressed me in this matter as the 
ignorance of a wealthy classmate of mine at 
Harvard, a man who has since devoted him- 
self to helping his fellow men with conspicu- 
ous success, when I went with him to see one of 
the factories of Massachusetts in operation. 
The contrast between his own beautiful, lux- 
urious and abundant life, and the narrow, re- 
stricted and maimed existence of many of 
these people, was never forgotten by him. I 
shall tell that story some day too. He often 
said to me that children should never be per- 
mitted to grow up without some kind of rea- 
sonably full knowledge of how other children 
grow up and how human beings spend their 
lives. 

This naturally leads one to talk about privi- 
leges and immunities. Why are some people 
rich and others poor? Why are some edu- 
cated and some ignorant? Why are some 
efficient and others inefficient? These are 
problems that may not be attacked too soon, 
especially on the moral side. How much does 
equipment have to do with success? And 
what is success anyway? Who is judge of 
when a man's work is well done? Who is to 
control his opportunity for making the most 
of himself? Have men generally the oppor- 



ETHICS 338 

tunity to make all there is in them come to the 
sm-face? If not, why not? What is the rela- 
tion of success and effectiveness to conditions 
of life? Which predominates in the ultimate 
result, the man or the surroundings? What 
is the meaning of tools? Where do tools come 
from? What part do industry, skill and jper- 
severance and education have in the making of 
life? Are 'privileges the result of these, or of 
something else? You can easily get to some 
of the most searching things in life in this easy 
way. And perhaps it won't hurt any of us to 
do this for our own sakes as well as the chil- 
dren! 

You will find that as you deal with nature 
studies of one kind and another, that the moral 
questions come up, and this is the time to show 
the difference between natural law and moral 
law and indeed the relations of one to the 
other. Natural relationships bring certain 
kinds of rights and duties. Often questions 
which stagger us, when put independent of 
some concrete matter, become easy to handle 
when we deal with them impersonally, and this 
is especially true when we deal with the ques- 
tion of sex, though people will always differ 
as to what they ought to do about such matters, 
and very properly, since it is by no means easy 
to dogmatize about it. But the public discus- 



SS4 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

sions are so frequent now, and the newspapers 
and magazines talk so freely, that since you 
are to produce a reading child and a thinking 
child you might as well deal with it yourself. 
Of course the basis has already been laid in 
habits which you are insisting upon quite inde- 
pendent of any instruction, duties which you 
lay down, and requirements which you make, 
merely because you are set to do it and about 
which you will permit no particular question 
to be raised till they have become necessary to 
the child's comfort. Cleanliness^ when it has 
become a habit becomes a protection, Sound 
hygienic living at first, inculcated by mere au- 
thority, soon becomes its own sponsor, because 
departure from it means discomfort and un- 
happiness. But this having been done, cul- 
tivate the discussion of the inner things. And 
encourage the expression of ideas without re- 
gard to whether they are satisfactory or not 
and never show contempt for the opinion. 

So much has been said about respect for the 
child's personality that seems to me mere 
fudge, that I hesitate to say my own word. 
By all means have respect for the child's per- 
sonality and especially by never showing con- 
tempt for anything that has real and genuine 
interest for the child. But never lose sight 
of the fact that the main interest for you is 



ETHICS 335 

keeping the attitude of respect for superior 
judgment and superior experience and only 
raise the question whether it is superior judg- 
ment and experience. Reverence for author- 
ity, age, and the abihty to endure the eccen- 
tricities and pecuharities of disposition on the 
part of mature persons, should be learned by 
children, and when this process which I have 
been talking about is carried through, you will 
find the child making qualifications in its own 
way, which are very illuminating. Take a 
case of my own. I believe and have always 
believed strongly in authority. I came to it 
by experience, by philosophical study, and by 
religious conviction. But, of course, you can 
become overbeamed on any subject. Ordi- 
narily, life itself makes the necessary qualifica- 
tions. But one of the things which has 
always been a special source of irritation to 
me has been carelessness. 

In our home I dreaded exhibitions of care- 
lessness even more than infractions of rules, 
and I do still, because I dread the influence 
and power of irresponsible action more than 
I do positive action, even when it is bad. 
Well, my stern rebukes of things sometimes 
led me to be unjust, as, for example, articles 
might be broken without the child who caused 
the break being aware of it, as in play or 



3S6 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

without noticing it. On one such occasion a 
stern rebuke, which landed on nobody in par- 
ticular, but which silenced excuses because I 
rather tartly exclaimed, *'Then nobody did 
it!" when each child disclaimed the act, led to 
the organization by the children of "The Scape- 
goat Club" in which it was agreed that some- 
body should take the blame, though uncon- 
scious of it. I may have already referred to 
it. The important thing was that this was a 
clear recognition of my defect, and a pro- 
vision for it. I cannot see that it ever inter- 
fered with my children's affection or obedi- 
ence. They knew my horror of carelessness 
and sought to pacify me and they did. 

The saving clause of this transaction was 
that it disturbed no moral relations. They 
knew that my anxiety was for them and not 
for the mere cost or value of any article. That 
made them attempt to provide a modus Vi- 
vendi just as they did with the cookies. But it 
showed moral discrimination and appreciation 
and this is the important thing. Happy is 
the house where parents and children are thus 
morally related, because it makes for unity of 
action and purpose and ideals. It makes for 
freedom of thought and Hberty in action. It 
releases powers which otherwise would be 
bound up either in fear or lashed into resist- 



ETHICS 337 

ance. I have known it to happen in both these 
forms, because there was no moral common 
denominator in the home. 

All ethical instruction ultimately raises 
questions of religion and concerning these I 
will not say much, having discussed them else- 
where. But I think I may add, that religion 
is the surest handmaid of every other interest 
in life, because it harmonizes with every other 
interest, which is rational and which has any 
ideal element in it. But let not your religious 
teaching become mere moral harassing. Link 
it with history, with art, with public life and 
service, with the enjoyment of life, and with 
the glory of the world. Cause it to be an all 
pervasive thing rather than a specific set of 
acts and duties. Your use of the Bible for 
English will help to take away the mechanical 
idea of religion, and there is this to be said : the 
more mechanical your religious life for the 
child is permitted to become the surer will be 
the reaction from it. If you want your child's 
religion to be real, it must be free in the sense 
in which I have indicated. It must be linked 
with all kinds of human interests, and it must 
show that it is related to all the things which 
call for energy, power of decision, character, 
skill and ability. The reason why religion 
has so often seemed to fail, is that it has not 



338 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

been linked with any great paramount interest 
by which human life is governed. Your min- 
ister should be an important personage to you, 
if he is worth it. That he may be worth it, 
help to get one who is worth something. The 
churchy whatever your sect, should be of tre- 
mendous interest to you, therefore see to it 
that you help to make it worth while. Your 
moral alliances of every description cannot 
help but exercise a powerful influence upon 
your children, whether you wish it or not. We 
have to be in the world with other human be- 
ings, and we have to be like them enough to 
live with them. But it is for us to determine 
whether our children shall he submerged by 
them or hold the rudder of their own careers 
and steer by their own lights reason and con- 
science, and this you must help to secure by 
helping to make those influences which you 
cannot escape, what they ought to be. I was 
always anxious about the ministers my chil- 
dren were to hear, when they were not listen- 
ing to me. I was always anxious who com- 
manded their attention and always sought to 
know why. I always noted what kinds of 
personahty gained influence and affection 
with them, because these were indexes of what 
I should do myself. You would feel grieved, 
I know, if you should find out, what is un- 



ETHICS 339 

happily too often true, that your child is tak- 
ing its social ideals from people not in your 
home and its moral attitudes from persons 
who are more careful to define them, than 
you yourself. Therefore observe these things 
carefully. Let nobody rob you of your great- 
est jewel in life. Never permit anyone to ac- 
quire a superior influence or power over your 
own. That you may do this, may I say you 
must be superior to any other. Nothing in 
heaven or earth can prevent a nobler spirit, a 
better mind and a purer heart, from getting a 
superior influence with your child, if these are 
matched, against your own. Nothing can 
prevent greater skill and greater devotion 
from winning their hearts. I know this, be- 
cause I have often matched myself against 
unworthy, foolish and careless parents for the 
children's sakes, and have never had any diffi- 
culty in winning. 

But this ought normally never to he pos- 
sible j because natural affection, constant inter- 
course, intimacy of relation and undiluted con- 
fidence between parents and children are a 
mighty barrier. These childlike loyalties are 
very beautiful to witness, even when they are 
fooHsh. For example, a friend of ours was 
a beautiful cook who made dainties which we 
never could equal in our own home. We all 



340 TEACHING IN THE HOME ' 

knew it and we all gloried in the artist cook, 
as our friend really was. But again and 
again, when she tried to get our children to 
admit that her products were better than 
"mamma's" the determination to stand by 
"mamma" asserted itself, in spite of the ob- 
vious recognition of the better product of the 
artist. Up to a certain point this is most ad- 
mirable. In morals, it should always be the 
case. Children should feel called upon to 
stand on the 'parental platform against all cre- 
ation. That they may stand upon it worth- 
ily, it is your privilege and mine to make it 
worth standing upon through thick and thin. 
The moral solidarity of the home is its strength 
and its glory. Cast not away wantonly this 
pearl of greatest price. 



CHAPTER XIV 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The purpose of this chapter is to indicate 
some use of the tools which you are to em- 
ploy for teaching in the manner in which 
I have shown it to be done in the previous 
chapters. You will have gathered from what 
has been written, that you yourself are the chief 
source of instruction for your children, and 
that the main value of this work is, that it 
comes to the children with your own interest 
and through your maturity. That is where 
the home teaching differs from teaching in the 
school, where the relation is formal and pro- 
fessional. With you the relation is one of 
identity of interest, and linked with absolute 
authority and finality of judgment and pro- 
gram. Hence you are not merely to show 
what is to be done but join in the doing. I 
have shown in the new edition of the School 
in the Home, in the chapter on the "Mon- 
tessori System and the Home," that the great 
feature of that plan is its emphasis upon the 
influence of the parent and the parental rela- 

341 



342 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

tion. Just keep it constantly before your 
mind that you are the important feature in the 
entire scheme of work. 

Your work lies in the first instance largely 
with books. That means that if there is a 
library in your vicinity your first business is 
to get thoroughly acquainted with it. Let no 
week go by that you do not go to the library, 
and make yourself thoroughly familiar with 
what there is in it. The hbrarian will be only 
too glad to give you any assistance you may 
want, and you should learn how to use a card 
catalogue and how to get at things quickly. 
You should also study the lists of new addi- 
tions, and get quickly anything that seems to 
promise help in your work. Use the libraries 
a great deal even if you have many books at 
home because there are always things there 
which you cannot possibly have. If you can 
take the child and introduce him also and let 
him early associate his childhood with the li- 
brary and its contents, do that also. 

You should have first of all for your work 
a good dictionary, preferably one that gives the 
etymology of words and their history. If you 
cannot have such a dictionary yourself, when 
you go to the library, make lists of words 
which you are to look up there and get your 
knowledge from the large dictionaries there. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY S43 

Then you should have some first class en- 
cyclopcedia. These two tools are absolutely 
necessary. I should add to these a good large 
atlas and a large wall map of the world hung 
where it can readily be consulted. In fact, 
gi'oup all these things where you can get at 
them readily. What you cannot have by you, 
have frequent access to at your library. In 
many states the state university will gladly 
cooperate both as to help in studies and help in 
books. The library of the University of Ore- 
gon, for example, sends out books to people all 
over the state on application. Other state 
universities do this also and you can thus get 
help on particular matters by writing to some 
responsible person. This is especially true, if 
you care to get information on some special 
science. The head of the department will usu- 
ally welcome your inquiry and set you in the 
way of getting what you want to know. 

You should have likewise some good book of 
synonyms, I shall later mention some specific 
works, but you can easily locate one, because 
there are many which are not costly and it is 
absolutely needful for your purpose. Write 
to the leading publishers for their catalogues 
and study these. By the study of these you 
will find out what is being published, by whom, 
and you will find this of itself will introduce 



S44 .TEACHING IN THE HOME 

you to a large area of information which will 
be very useful to you. Such firms as Ginn 
and Co., D. C. Heath and Co., Houghton 
Mifflin and Co., of Boston; and Henry Holt 
and Co., The Macmillan Co., Appletons, and 
Crowell, of Xew York, as well as others, will 
give you a great deal of information, through 
their catalogues. I have never failed for years 
to get a full set of these catalogues and many 
others, just to keep before me what was being 
done and have by this means often found most 
useful aids to my work. 

Have a plan^, and a 'program, and a time 
table, for your work. And stick to it. Have 
a different subject for every day and thus let 
the days be associated with some special task. 
You will find this dignifies the work in the 
mind of the child and your own mind. It will 
also subconsciously lead to your organizing 
your knowledge for that particular time. In 
addition to all this, it will mean that the work 
will be simplified and seem less like a task. 
There is enough variety to prevent monotony. 
I found the use of a blackboard most helpful. 
Other parents get as good results just by writ- 
ing materials, but I alwaj^s liked to see the 
thing large myself and my children did too. 
I think it made for clearness. 

As to English, you must make the choice 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 345 

yourself, but if you will follow the line of the 
requirements for admission to college, you will 
be doing well because most of the stories can 
be read to little children with profit. Read a 
great deal of Shakespeare and the Bible, of 
course. Read out of the standard authors, 
choosing things you like best yourself, but also 
doing a little exploring on your own account. 
Read the books and familiarize the child with 
the literature which most children approach at 
about the high school age. In fact, you will 
find it useful to get such lists from the school 
superintendent and follow them. Have noth- 
ing to do with the ordinary "readers" so-called. 
Most of them are worse than useless. Study 
literature all the time. Study the biographies 
of the leading authors, English and American, 
not exhaustively, but enough to make the child 
familiar with the names. When you read 
Rip Van Winkle, for example, tell all you 
can find out about Washington Irving. Sim- 
ilarly of others. This is just to make the child 
acquainted with the names. Some of the facts 
will stick, too. 

Teach grammar from a Latin grammar and 
in connection with your study of English, re- 
membering that whatever you teach, you are 
still teaching English and with it grammar. 
But use the forms and the terms employed in 



34^6 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

Latin grammar. Any standard Latin gram- 
mar will answer your purpose, Allen and 
Greenough's, Harkness, or Bennett. In this 
connection also you will find The Latin Word 
List, by G. H. Browne, most useful. Paul 
R. Jenks' Manual of Latin Word Formation 
will also be found of great service, and one of 
the most useful books I have seen for the use 
I have in mind is Dr. B. L. D'Ooge's Latin for 
Beginners, These, of course, are tools for 
yourself and for the fertilization of your own 
mind. If you have no previous knowledge of 
Latin yourself these will supply it for your 
purposes. If you care to give yourself some 
special preparation, study in connection with 
these Prof. E. C. Woolley's Handbook of 
Composition, 

As to the other languages, I must refer you 
to the catalogues and you will choose accord- 
ing to your predilection German, French or 
Italian. I know the French and German best 
and Bierwirth's Elementary German and 
Fraser and Squair's Shorter French Course 
will supply your need. Both taken in connec- 
tion with small German and French dictiona- 
ries will give you all the materials you need. 

For your study of geography, you will use 
simply your map and your glohe and the ma- 
terial you will find in your other studies. But 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 847 

I would take this up in connection with your 
daily "current events" study, in which your 
map and the things which the locality suggests 
will give you all the geography you need. 
Just keep in mind, I must caution you again, 
that you are merely giving the little child the 
grand outline of things and preparing the soil. 
You are not acquainting it with unusual and 
strange things but with the great general 
mass of ordinary knowledge, without which it 
cannot work at anything. 

For your study of history you must have 
Ploetz' Epitome, without which you should 
never be, and which is packed with all kinds 
of things and, except the dictionary and the 
encyclopaedia, the most useful book you will 
have. You will find in it not merely history, 
but geography, biography, diplomacy, and 
many other things. You should get some 
standard American history like Channing's 
and get a look at the large Narrative and 
Critical History of America in your library. 
If the library hasn't got it, make them get it 
because it is packed with all kinds of interest- 
ing things which you need to know. In the 
chapter on history I have referred to some 
other works, just as I have in the chapter on 
English. 

For science teaching there is no better book 



S48 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

to Have at hand than Caldwell and Eiken- 
berry's General Science and if you do not 
care to have a special text book on the other 
sciences, this one will give you a great deal of 
help. I have made numerous references to it 
already and for practical use and usable infor- 
mation, it is one of the most available volumes 
I know. It has many practical experiments 
in connection with its text which make it very 
interesting as well. Bergen's Elements of 
Botany and Professor Spalding's Introduc- 
tion to Botany are both very useful, the latter 
being specially adapted to your purpose be- 
cause of its specific directions for teaching and 
helpful suggestions. Mr. Bergen's book gives 
more advanced and scientific information 
which you will find valuable. In this same 
connection Mr. Grant Allen's Story of the 
Plants, and his Flashlights on Nature are both 
valuable, both as scientific materials and as in- 
teresting reading. Professor Colton's Zool- 
ogy, especially the second part, which deals 
with the practical side, you will find almost in- 
dispensable because of its suggestiveness and 
helpful directions. Lindsay's Story of Ani- 
mal Life will be found full of interest also. 
For the studies in geology and indeed other 
sciences, the little manuals of the Boston So- 
ciety of Natural History will be found very 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 349 

useful. Professor Shaler's First Book in 
Geology is from a master hand. In connec- 
tion with all these, as well as hterary studies, 
as such, I want to urge you to have at hand 
another indispensable httle book called High 
School Word Book by Sandwick and Bacon, 
which will give you many things of which I 
have spoken again and again. You will find 
this httle book of much service to you in many 
directions. If I had had this book when I 
began with my own children my work would 
have been cut in half. 

There are two books which you should read 
for your own sake as well as the children's, 
which will, as I think, help on the most impor- 
tant subject of sex instruction, namely Tracy 
and Stimpfl's Psychology of Childhood and 
Galloway's Biology of Sea), Taken in con- 
nection with such a book as Foster and Shore's 
Elementary Physiology, you will have every- 
thing in that direction that you need and much 
more than you can possibly use. You will 
find here much that is of interest to you per- 
sonally entirely apart from the question of 
what you wish to do for your children. Dr. 
Florence Richards' Hygiene for Girls is espe- 
cially good in its chosen field. For ethical in- 
struction such a book as Professor Drake's 
Problems of Conduct will be found fertilizing 



S50 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

and assimilated by yourself will give the ma- 
terials for approach to the subject with the 
children. 

These, of course, are but a few of many 
books equally good, and I may add to them in 
some later edition of this book. I mention 
these merely because I happen to know them 
and know that you will find them fitted to 
what I have in mind. 

I think, too, I ought to say a word about 
newspapers. The weekly edition of the 
Springfield (Mass.) Republican is the most 
valuable newspaper adjunct to household 
training and education I know in the news- 
paper field, because it combines so many things 
of first-rate quality for your purpose. Its 
editorials are in good English and its columns 
carefully edited. Its reviews of books are 
good and authoritative generally. Its han- 
dling of hterary and musical matters is en- 
lightening, and altogether any household that 
once gets in the habit of reading it, will never 
be easy without it. For keeping abreast with 
the leading ideas of the time and having put 
before you what an enlightened citizen ought 
to think and talk about, this newspaper has, I 
believe, no equal in the United States. 

Similarly we have found the same to be true, 
though on somewhat different lines, of the 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 351 

semi-weekly New York Evening Post. It is 
not so comprehensive as the Springfield Re- 
publican, but in its field authoritative, and its 
editorial discussions are the equivalent of a lib- 
eral education, read through a series of years. 
This is true also of its book reviews. Both 
these newspapers aim to give the news truth- 
fully and in a form which will not insult the in- 
telligence and taste of readers. It will be of 
much value to your children to be reared in a 
home where newspapers like these are read and 
their opinions talked about. I think I need 
not say that in suggesting any of the books or 
papers I have mentioned in this book, I am 
doing so in a purely disinterested fashion. I 
mean that I have no interest directly or indi- 
rectly in any of them, nor do any of them know 
I am writing these lines. Many of the 
authors, in fact, most of them, I know only 
through their books. 

Keep in touch with the Bureau of Educa- 
tion at Washington for their publications. 
Also with the state university of your State, 
and the school officials, as to text books and 
authorities about matters concerning which 
you are in doubt. Get the habit of looking at 
all the books in your vicinity wherever you 
happen to find yourself and constantly add to 
your knowledge of books in this way. You 



352 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

will soon learn to distinguish between books of 
permanent worth and those of ephemeral in- 
terest. Look into a book before buying it. In 
this way you will find yourself acquiring an 
ability to test many books by casual glance 
through them. But always keep before you 
this one fact, that you are getting all this ma- 
terial in the book form because that is the form 
in which it is educationally negotiable. 

The matter of newspapers is much more im- 
portant than is generally suspected. The 
daily newspaper which the children see and 
handle, and whose views and news they hear 
discussed, has a decided influence in forming 
their point of view on many things. Children 
should be taught to read not from books but 
from the newspaper and in connection with 
current, vital things. They should be taught 
how to seek facts in daily reports, and by this 
means get the habit of knowing what is tak- 
ing place around them. The newspaper that 
enters your house is therefore a capital mat- 
ter. 

FINALLY 

Throughout the pages which have gone be- 
fore, I have tried to give you a fairly reason- 
able transcript of how I believe it possible for 
ordinary people, who have the welfare of their 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 353 

children on the intellectual side seriously at 
heart, to build up the mental life in such a way 
as to not only make the whole subsequent 
school life vastly more productive than in most 
cases it now appears to be, but also rear per- 
sons who are actually superior persons in 
themselves, capable of thinking carefully, ca- 
pable of controlling themselves in times of 
crises, capable of using their energies to the 
best possible profit for themselves and their 
families, and the communities in which they 
live, and calculated to help in making a finer 
and nobler civilization. Always i^emember 
that the advances of the world are not made 
by the thousand and one people who can do 
things fairly well, but by the few persons who 
are able to do them exceptionally well. It 
must be reasonably clear to almost all onlook- 
ers that most people, as we see them, do not 
appear to get much out of life besides eating, 
drinking and sleeping. Most of them do not 
seem to be distinguished by anything in par- 
ticular. Most of them leave no particular im- 
press upon the communities in which they live 
and move and have their being. And this is 
true, not because they have not the natural ca- 
pabilities for doing many of these things. It 
is chiefly due to the fact that in the earlier 
stages of their development, when they were 



354 TEACHING IN THE HOME 

making their pathway, nobody thought it 
worth while to point them wisely and train 
them effectively. Hence most of them are the 
prey to the superior persons who use them for 
their own purposes. I am firm in my belief, 
often expressed, that given good health and 
freedom from organic defects, the difference 
in the possibilities of most children is very 
slight. I do not believe most geniuses are 
such except by contrast with the general indo- 
lence and stupidity around them. Given in- 
tensive culture, a high degree of self-control 
and self -expenditure, rational ideals and spe- 
cific aims early in life, almost any child will 
surpass expectations. The question is simply, 
in the first instance, whether the parents will 
wake up to this fact, and recognizing it, will 
supply the first aids to superior 'personality. 
That is what this book seeks to do, and I close 
with the assurance that even approximately 
following out the line of procedure I have in- 
dicated, you will have joy and satisfaction be- 
yond expression. You will not only have the 
joy of what your child will achieve, but have 
the added joy of knowing that in part, at least, 
it was your own character and devotion that 
produced the result. 

THE END 



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